First of all I fully recognize there is no such thing as a minimum record that gets a team an invitation to the NCAA Tournament. Every season is unique. But I thought it might be interesting to look back at Vanderbilt's record the last time we made it to The Big Dance: Bryce Drew's first year here, of course, 2016-17.
The Commodores finished the regular season 10-8 in SEC play and 17-14 overall. Some pundits said that nothing short of an SEC Tournament title would relegate us to the NIT, because no team had ever lost 15 games and received an at-large bid. Not so fast my friend. The Commodores beat AM and Florida, before losing to Arkansas in the semi-finals for our 15th loss of the season. Not only did VU get into the NCAA Tournament with those 15 Ls, they made it comfortably as a 9 seed.
It was an interesting year which included getting our hats handed to us by MTSU in the Murphy Center, losing to UT here but beating them in Thompson-Bowling, and surviving a streak of five conference loses in six games in January.
Anyway, I digress. We are currently sitting at 2-2 in SEC play and 9-8 overall. If we go 8-6 the rest of the way in the SEC we would finish with a 17-14 record overall, 10-8 in the conference. Which we all know would guarantee us absoltely nothing. But, any chance we can go 8-6 the rest of the way to make things interesting?
The Commodores finished the regular season 10-8 in SEC play and 17-14 overall. Some pundits said that nothing short of an SEC Tournament title would relegate us to the NIT, because no team had ever lost 15 games and received an at-large bid. Not so fast my friend. The Commodores beat AM and Florida, before losing to Arkansas in the semi-finals for our 15th loss of the season. Not only did VU get into the NCAA Tournament with those 15 Ls, they made it comfortably as a 9 seed.
It was an interesting year which included getting our hats handed to us by MTSU in the Murphy Center, losing to UT here but beating them in Thompson-Bowling, and surviving a streak of five conference loses in six games in January.
Anyway, I digress. We are currently sitting at 2-2 in SEC play and 9-8 overall. If we go 8-6 the rest of the way in the SEC we would finish with a 17-14 record overall, 10-8 in the conference. Which we all know would guarantee us absoltely nothing. But, any chance we can go 8-6 the rest of the way to make things interesting?
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