VANDERBILT
Vanderbilt lands commitment from 2020 point guard out of Canada
The Vanderbilt Commodores have had a rough couple of years in SEC play and have battled some difficult injury situations.
As they prepare for coach Jerry Stackhouse’s second year in charge of the program, they got some good recruiting news on Saturday.
Per Sports Illustrated, 2020 PG Trevon Thomas committed to the Commodores this week during a call with Stackhouse.
Thomas has yet to be rated by any of the major recruiting services, but the 5-11 guard from Toronto caught the attention of the Commodores anyway.
The Commodores now have 4 players in their 2020 recruiting class, which currently ranks No. 60 in the nation and No. 11 in the SEC, per 247Sports.
You have to feel sorry for Vanderbilt’s fans. For so many years, Vanderbilt was only behind Kentucky in basketball prestige. There was a time when Roy Skinner went head to head with Kentucky and had a .500 record, but this was also a time when one SEC team went to the NCAA Tournament, and the NIT banned SEC teams from participating due to Kentucky’s point-shaving incident and the lack of integration in the league.
Last year, the basketball team had to use multiple walk-on players, and their recruiting has dropped from getting multiple McDonald’s All-Americans to unrated players not talented enough to win in the SEC.
Vanderbilt basketball needs to be top-rate, just like Auburn football needs to be great as an alternative to Alabama. The current situation is doomed to failure, because Vanderbilt went from having one of the 5 best recruiters in the nation in Roger Powell to having the worst recruiting staff in all of power conference basketball. That’s what happens when you hire a head coach that had never had one day of college coaching experience, not even as the bottom assistant at a low major.
I have heard through friends that have inside information in the matter that Vanderbilt had first dibs on Eric Musselman when the job was available before Arkansas had their opening. I was told that Musselman’s agent had inquired about the job, and that when the Musselman family was in Nashville for the NCAA Tournament when they won twice to send Nevada to the Sweet 16, they remarked that Nashville was an incredible city.
My friend, who is an analytics Einstein, showed me the numbers that Musselman is the number one head coach in college sports when it comes to using analytics and coaching in such a way that players improve. He showed me the hard numbers, where the players he has coached that also played for other college coaches, improved their efficiencies by large numbers, and he predicted before last season started that Musselman would take Arkansas to the NCAA Tournament within two seasons and into the Final Four within five seasons.
Vanderbilt’s then AD hired Jerry Stackhouse in a quid pro quo action that funneled money to the same Korn Ferry headhunting organization that recommended him to Vanderbilt. Malcolm Turner then took a multi-million dollar rainy day fund left him by the late David Williams and bankrupted the athletic budget to the point where the school could not afford to conduct a legitimate search for his replacement.
When a certain someone brandished yours truly as a hater of Vanderbilt, he is so far off, he’s on Pluto. I gave my blood to this school for too many years, giving thousands of dollars and “helping” steer recruits, giving summer jobs to athletes, lending a couple athletes some money, having athletes to my house for Sunday dinner, and as a youth in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s, watching Coach Bob Polk’s house, getting his mail and papers when he was out of town. Additionally, I was the beat reporter for VU sports for several years when employed as the sports director of a major radio station and as part of a state radio network.
So, I believe I am highly qualified when I say that college sports have evolved to a point where Vanderbilt and the SEC make for a fractured relationship. Vanderbilt remains in this league so that they can be paid like concubine for services rendered. They pimp their athletes to be screwed by the 13 clients that get satisfaction for the money in the process of beating up on their football and basketball teams.
Vanderbilt has reached the same point that Sewanee reached in 1940. The money wasn’t there in those days, so Sewanee left the league when they honestly admitted that they could not compete against the SEC. Georgia Tech and Tulane also realized this before the money became what it is. Vanderbilt is caught in the Catch-22 situation. But, even with $45 million going into their athletic budget, the school charges that budget for the full tuition for every scholarship, so most of that money is diverted from the athletic budget.
Vanderbilt should be honest with itself and its fans and do what is just. They should drop Division 1 football and remain Division 1 in all other sports. There are leagues where they would fit in quite well, where the other schools are in major cities where professional sports are first, second, and third, and a major state school is fourth. Or, they should drop scholarship athletics altogether, and move to D3 like Sewanee, finding new uses for their current athletics real estate. As Coach Art Guepe said in the early 1960’s, “You cannot be Harvard from Monday through Friday and attempt to be Alabama on Saturday.” Vanderbilt needs to be Harvard 7 days a week. Actually, I say Princeton is better than Harvard. Go Tigers.