Well. There's One Thing That Vanderbilt Basketball Can't Get Back; Column
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NASHVILLE—It’s almost as if Ja’Kobi Gillespie was holding it in as he slapped hands with each Vanderbilt player, but he was willing to let himself go as he got a few yards away from the Vanderbilt bench and to the end of the handshake line.
When Gillespie finally got to the end of the line, a Tennessee staffer jumped on him and Gillespie grabbed his jersey as to flex the white “Tennessee Volunteers” text that jumped out across it. As Gillespie and the rest of Tennessee’s roster bounced up and down on the way to the locker room, they did so as they approached a big contingent of their fans.
When they got into the tunnel, they made the statement that Gillespie appeared to have in mind as he trounced around the floor.
“This is our house,” the unidentifiable voices shouted as they walked through the hallways of the old gym.
This Vanderbilt team is on track to challenge the program’s wins record, earn a seed in the NCAA Tournament that is among the highest in program history and has real, attainable aspirations of getting out of the first round of the NCAA Tournament. Saturday, it lost something that it’s no longer capable of doing.
Theorize whatever you will about the potential future of this Vanderbilt team, but it beating Tennessee at home is no longer on the table. That means something within the context of this rivalry.
“It’s disappointing,” Vanderbilt forward AK Okereke said. “I thought the shots we got down the stretch we’re pretty good with, it’s just a make or miss game.”
In the context of the season this group has had, it only felt right that this team would find a way to win this one–particuarly since it was favored–but oftentimes fate falls flat in regard to logic and the grind of an SEC schedule.
Turns out reality doesn’t care much about a potentially historic win, it cares more about Vanderbilt stars Tyler Tanner and Duke Miles, respectively, having the flu and coming back from a prolonged absence due to injury. It puts far more stock into Tanner missing the potential game-tying 3 at the end of the game, Okereke missing a fadeaway in the final minute and Tyler Nickel missing a momentum-swinging late-game 3, as well.
Perhaps Vanderbilt is a better team than this Tennessee team is this season, but it didn’t prove that on Saturday. It didn’t play well enough to get the job done, frankly.
“It was a hard-fought game, and I would love to be able to sit there and say, we played hard, we competed and it's gonna be a happy ending, but that's sports,” Byington said. “This is high-level sports. So it didn't go our way tonight. So we got to come right back.”
Byington isn’t saying that Vanderbilt didn’t compete or play hard on Saturday, but his statement was acknowledging that this program and team is at the point where a moral victory isn’t good enough at this program, and it shouldn’t be.
Vanderbilt played Tennessee’s game on Saturday and couldn’t find a way to win a slow-paced grinder. This was Vanderbilt’s second-lowest scoring output of the season. Vanderbilt didn’t get killed on the glass like it could’ve, but it didn’t get this to be a Vanderbilt game. It never hit the shot that ended this thing, either. This was a Tennessee game, and Vanderbilt paid the price for that reality.
“Probably a couple things we could’ve been better at,” Vanderbilt big man Jalen Washington said. “We gotta go look at the film. Coach will give us suggestions when we can reflect on what we can do better.”
For now, though, this Vanderbilt team will just have to sit and wrestle with the idea that in a highly-anticipated home game against a rival, it fell. All it can do now is wrestle with the idea that it wasn’t good enough in a game that a significant amount of its fanbase will remember it for a long time.
Perhaps this doesn’t mean much in regard to this Vanderbilt team’s long term long-term ability, but it doesn’t change that reality that it can’t get today back. Maybe it can get its get back in a few weeks, but today is what it is.
“Unfortunate on the side we are right now,” Byington said. “I thought we came into the game the right way, played the right way. The frustrating thing that sticks out right now. We just left too many things out there that I think we're capable of.”
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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