NASHVILLE, Tenn. — One historic Vanderbilt basketball streak ended over the weekend. Another streak continued Wednesday inside Memorial Gymnasium.
The Commodores have dropped 25 straight games against teams from the Southeastern Conference after a 77-62 loss to Alabama. On Saturday against Tennessee they saw a streak of 1,080 straight games with a made 3 go by the wayside.
Neither of those demoralizing circumstances means Jerry Stackhouse’s team is going to give up on the 2019-20 season.
“The guys in the locker room, they’re not quitters,” Vanderbilt junior guard Saben Lee said. “So we’ll play to the end of the buzzer. No matter the score we just play hard and continue to compete.”
That sentiment was evident Wednesday after the Dores trailed by 21 points with 5:42 to go. Vandy was able to trim that margin to 11 with 46 seconds left – too little, too late, sure, but a positive sign of the direction of the campaign.
A sixth-straight defeat overall hasn’t deterred the mindset of a young and short-handed squad.
“I think we just have to continue to know it’s not going to be easy,” Stackhouse said. “The perception is what it is and we have to find a way to fight through that perception. We have to play against everybody. I think that’s important for us just to make sure we know the only ones we can count on are the ones in that locker room.”
Still without starting guard and leading scorer sophomore Aaron Nesmith and starting senior center Clevon Brown, Vanderbilt never led Wednesday. But it gave itself a fighting chance until the Crimson Tide (10-7, 3-2 SEC) went on a 14-0 run in the second half that virtually decided the game.
The scoreboard didn’t tell the entire story.
The Commodores (8-10, 0-5 SEC) forced 25 turnovers, had 13 steals and had 28 points in the paint. And despite going just 3 of 15 from 3 in the first half were down only 37-31 at the break after falling behind by 12.
“I know we’re young, but we got to stop getting hit in the mouth,” Stackhouse said. “Once we get hit in the mouth, we’ll fight, but we got to try to take it upon ourselves to hit first. I think that’s the next level for us.”
Freshman Dylan Disu set a career high with 21 points and 10 of those points came with less than five minutes to to play with Vandy trying to make a serious comeback. Fellow freshman Jordan Wright had six points, four steals and three assists and Lee continued to climb the program’s all-time scoring list by chipping in 19.
Rebounding and a failure to capitalize off Alabama miscues wound up being the difference, however. The Dores were beat 51-32 on the glass and only scored 23 points off those 25 Crimson Tide turnovers.
“Forced a lot of turnovers, just unfortunately weren’t able to convert at the clip that we wanted to tonight,” Stackhouse said. “Talked to the guys in the locker room that we did a lot of good things on the defensive end forcing that many turnovers, but we got to try to convert at a little better clip. Not too many games in this league we’re going to win where we shoot only 30 percent and that’s not going to give us the best chance to win.
“But again, we’ll keep working at it, keep coming to work every day working on our game, working on our shooting and working on our extra passing. I think we’ll continue to see some breakthrough.”
Vanderbilt moves forward with a pair of tough road games – first at South Carolina on Saturday then on to Kentucky on Wednesday. The Commodores’ first-year coach expects his team ready to battle those nights regardless of the tough circumstances.
“We’re getting better, we’re doing some good things and we’re going to continue to block out the noise and make sure we just focus on what we need to do internally,” Stackhouse said.
Chad Bishop covers Vanderbilt for VUCommodores.com. Follow him @MrChadBishop.
