May 23, 2007
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No Room Left for Error as Vanderbilt Looks to Bounce Back
Post-Game Column By Will Matthews
HOOVER, Ala. – Vanderbilt Head Coach Tim Corbin didn’t feel any need to mince words Wednesday night in the immediate aftermath of his team’s 6-4 loss to rival Tennessee in the first round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament.
Relegated to the tournament’s losers bracket after tasting defeat for just the third time in their last 17 games, Corbin knows his Commodores have their backs to the wall and but one option if they are to become the first team since 1996 to win both the SEC regular season and tournament championships in the same year.
“Win game two,” Corbin said matter-of-factly when asked what it would take for his club to rebound from dropping its tournament opener and claim the crown.
History, however, is not on Vanderbilt’s side.
Only three teams in the tournament’s 30-year history have captured the championship after losing its first game – one of them being the 1980 Vanderbilt club. And after losing Wednesday, Vanderbilt will have to win five straight games here to be the last team standing Sunday. The 1996 Alabama squad is the last team to win this tournament when having to win as many as five games to do so.
But Vanderbilt this year has proven to be nothing if not resilient. This is a team, after all, that has 29 come-from-behind victories to its credit and a team that Corbin has said all year never believes it will lose.
Even after being no-hit for seven innings Wednesday by Tennessee ace James Adkins, junior second baseman Alex Feinberg said the mood in the dugout never once wavered.
“At every point in the game I felt we were going to win,” said Feinberg, who went hitless in four at bats. “In every inning I felt that this was the inning that we were going to get going and it just never happened. It just didn’t work out that way.”
The Commodores did, however, manage to scratch out four late runs and even brought the tying run to the plate in the bottom of the ninth before junior catcher Shea Robin flied out to center field to end it.
It is that kind of moxie that Vanderbilt will have to employ if it is to live to see the weekend.
“A perfect example of the kind of team that we are is tonight,” said sophomore Brett Jacobson, who allowed four earned runs in five plus innings Wednesday. “We were down 6-1 and we had one hit in the ballgame going into the bottom of the ninth inning. Most teams would just sit there and say, `Okay, we lost this game, we have to start thinking about tomorrow.’ But we just went through, got three runs and I think everyone on the bench was thinking that we were going to win this thing and that is how it always is in our dugout and that is what has brought us success. That is what we are going to keep on doing in this tournament.”
Vanderbilt collected just three hits Wednesday – tied for a season low. But there was little cause for concern for sophomore third baseman Pedro Alvarez, whose two-run ninth inning home run pulled Vanderbilt within two.
“We just need to put tonight behind us,” Alvarez said. “We are a better offensive team than we showed tonight so we just need to come back tomorrow like nothing happened and play the way we have been playing all year.”
And so while Vanderbilt is indeed left staring at a steep uphill battle, the team is not lacking confidence as it approaches Thursday’s game against Mississippi State, a 3-1 loser Wednesday to Mississippi.
“It is more of a challenge to come out of the losers bracket because you don’t have a loss as a cushion and you have to play more games to get there, but in all honesty I have all the confidence in the world in this team,” Jacobson said. “Our pitching staff is as deep as any pitching staff in the country so I think we have a great chance at making it all the way through this thing. I think our hitters will absolutely click it in. I still think we are the best team in the country and that being said I still think we are going to win some ballgames.”
Will Matthews spent three years as an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group in Southern California. He earned his Master of Divinity degree in 2007 from Vanderbilt Divinity School. To email Will your feedback, Click Here
