Takeaways From Vanderbilt Basketball's Blowout Loss to Arkansas

Vanderbilt basketball just lost in a way that it rarely has in Mark Byington's time as its head coach.

The Commodores were ran off the floor in a 93-68 loss to Arkansas on Tuesday night. It was a poor enough showing to get Byington on a soapbox in his postgame radio hit.

Here's what got Byington to that point.

A night to forget for Vanderbilt basketball

Well.

Time for this program to get ready for Mississippi State and forget this as fast as it can. It’ll have a hard time doing that, though.

Vanderbilt trailed for the entirety of Tuesday’s game, trailed by as much as 31, was outscored 50-22 in the paint and lacked swagger for the first time this season. Arkansas outclassed Vanderbilt in just about every regard. It shut down Vanderbilt’s offense for long stretches, made its defense look uniquely average and had this thing decided by the middle of the second half.

This Vanderbilt team hasn’t taken a punch in the face like that all season.

That forces re-evaluation of the perception of where this group really stands

Vanderbilt is obviously good and is easily an NCAA Tournament team, but it may be further from elite than what it proved to be through the first 16 games of the season.

Projecting that this group will win the SEC regular season title, become a Final Four contender and a top three seed in the NCAA Tournament appears to be irresponsible after the three-game stretch that it’s had.

This group hasn’t looked to be of that caliber recently and appears to have a few more flaws than it had proven to have.

The first eight minutes were Vanderbilt’s worst of the season

Who was that group of guys wearing black jerseys? Where was the abundance of easy looks that they’ve grown accustomed to having? Where was the defensive intensity? Did the old guy wearing No. 5 just get backdoored? Did Billy Richmond really just get to the basket on a straight-line drive off of a sideline out of bounds play?

That didn’t look like Vanderbilt, but it was Vanderbilt.

It’s as out of character as this group has looked all season and as a result it got blitzed and was down double digits early in this one. By the first media timeout, Vanderbilt was being outrebounded significantly, Mike James was on the ground in seemingly agonizing pain and the “woo pig suie” chants were flowing in Fayetteville.

This Vanderbilt team appeared to be above a stretch like that. Evidently it’s not, though. It learned that on Tuesday.

It’s past time to worry about the rebounding

Arkansas is 94th in offensive rebounding and 179th in defensive rebounding percentage heading into Tuesday night. The Razorbacks’ rebounding body of work appeared to be a measuring stick for Vanderbilt in that it wasn’t overwhelmingly impressive like Florida’s was, but it would give Vanderbilt some trouble.

The barometer in which Vanderbilt was measured on Tuesday night indicates that it’s got big problems on the glass. Arkansas out-rebounded Vanderbilt 39-27 on Tuesday, grabbed 10 offensive rebounds while Vanderbilt grabbed nine.

Vanderbilt’s numbers on the glass on the season don’t indicate it has a problem, but its SEC metrics indicate that this wasn’t a fluke. The Commodores are 16th in the SEC in offensive rebounding percentage and eighth in defensive rebounding. They’ve been out-rebounded by 7.16 rebounds per game in league play.

Time for Vanderbilt to take Tyler Tanner’s advice

Tanner himself could benefit from this after Arkansas point guard Darius Acuff thoroughly outplayed him.

“Just a short-term memory,” Tanner said Saturday in regard to what Vanderbilt needed to do in order to bounce back from its two-consecutive losses.. “We're gonna lose games, it’s gonna happen in the SEC. So, I mean, we're gonna learn from this, but we're not gonna harp on the negatives or anything.  We're just gonna try to get better and come back.”