Vanderbilt basketball stuns #1 Florida

Had to post on this -- 83-70 on Saturday. It was front page news on ESPN.com for much of the weekend.

Vanderbilt hasn't been a basketball power in my lifetime. A season that ends with an NIT appearance is often a big deal. But not too long ago they used to be a force to be reckoned with at home, even when it wasn't a good year. Memorial Gym is the only one in the nation with the benches on the ends, not the sides and the student section is next to the court which creates a large home court edge. They had a series of upsets of top 5 teams in the 80s and early 90s and typically had only one or two home losses each season. But in the past 10 years, the program has really been down. In fact earlier this year, I harped on the fact that national power ratings had Vanderbilt not even in the top 100. At home, they had lost to noted power Furman ;), had close victories over Lipscomb and Toledo and beat Elon (4-20 and one of the 50 worst division one teams) by only 11. I noted this was embarassing and they should fire the coach.

Somewhere around the new year, this became a new team. They had a close loss on the road at Auburn which was perhaps foreshadowing. Then in the course of two weeks, they beat a ranked Tennessee and Alabama teams (who may have been overrated in retrospect) and went into Rupp Arena and beat Kentucky for the second time ever. They had a clunker at Tennessee but the turnaround hit a peak with the upset of #1 Florida.

What's amazing is that in six weeks this team has gone from playing like a not top 100 team with no post-season hope, to a top 15, or even top 10 team that's a lock for the NCAA tournament. ESPN predicted them as a 5 seed this week, but if they keep playing at this new level, they'd improve on that.

That said, I still think it's time to fire the coach. There's pretty clearly top 15 talent here; how bad do you have to coach to make them play like #115?

P.S. I guess the down period is a bit longer than I think. Vanderbilt is #17 in the AP poll this week, their highest ranking since 1993.

P.P.S. The Vanderbilt baseball team is #3 in the nation.