Regular season is over. Ended on a high note. Ride whatever momentum this win provides. Or maybe not.

This is the official game thread.

Per the Tennessean:

Mo Hasan had 17 career pass attempts and never made a start, but the former Vanderbilt quarterback said the Italian mob knew enough about him to offer $300,000 to fix college football games when he was with the Commodores.

More here.

Someone ask him why he wasn’t out there for the seniors!!

Interesting overview of what should be in a coaching contract, and how to fire for cause. Of course we don’t know what’s in stack’s contract and I don’t have great confidence in the ad.

Feels good. Feels real good.

Either way. The plot thickens.

...when it comes academics AND team buses.

Yesterday


Last spring

Only game I would go to with MBB in its current state. Was planning to drive up but my son is sick. Let me know if you’re interested.

In the event that what happened this week through reporting elsewhere about Stackhouse returning wasn't Occam's razor (you know who you are!), I'd keep an eye on tonight and tomorrow to see what happens.

If Vanderbilt is intending to make a coaching change and has some competency about what it is doing, it would typically make a move sometime Saturday or Sunday and get moving towards nailing down a coach immediately, and perhaps have a coach next week.

So if nothing happens today or tomorrow, either they're not making a change or they are and don't have the competency that others schools have in how it's done to maximize your pool of candidates.

The other possibility is a Stephanie White situation where they make the correct decision long after the fact based on attrition, at which point the candidate pool has really shrunk.

Also, Washington has made a move with Mike Hopkins and so I'd expect Washington State's Kyle Smith (mentioned with Vanderbilt should there be an opening) to be involved there.

That's all I've got this morning.

I absolutely hate the new SEC website. Half the information that was available during baseball games has been deleted by the new formats. Live updates of batters averages, pitchers ERAs, etc. have been deleted. This must have been designed by someone from the US Department of Education in their ongoing efforts to dumb down America. I'm not crazy about the way they update basketball games either. I know it's new, but someone needs to get kicked in the nuts for screwing up a good thing. Well crap, now I sound like just another half baked angry old fart with nothing better to do than complain about others; maybe I should seek the dem nomination for POTUS.

To paraphrase Mark Twain, I didn't have the time to write short letter so I wrote a long one instead.

I work at an enormous Fortune 40-level health insurance company. I work in pharmacy strategy consulting. I've been here for over 3 years. The past year has been a difficult one for the company. We didn't hit our earnings targets and revised downward our '24 expectations. No layoffs yet but morale is cratering and everyone is thinking about their next move.

.... A recruiter reached out to me about a job that I might be a good fit for. I agree that it would basically be doing much of what my current boss does. The job is to be a Director of Pharmacy Strategy for a firm. They are a consulting broker who helps large employees plan and bid their health benefits Benefits.

It's 100% remote. They gave a salary range and a bonus %. Does not appear to include any stock options or stock grants.

If I got the top of the range, I'd improve my income by about 20-25%. The firm appears to be large and stable. They started in 2012 and seem like a legit Healthcare benefits consultancy for large employer groups.

What I'm trying to evaluate is if I should try to get the job or not. There's always "better the devil you know than the devil you don't." But it seems like a move up in responsibilities, job title and pay.

Side note: my wife also works for my employer. She been here a dozen years and I've been in for 4. So the idea of de-risking our financial picture by diversifying the sources of our income is also appealing to us.

I know we have lawyers, titans of Industry and some @ho-bo's here too, so send me your thoughts, you prayers, your barbecue recipes.

Please vote and post your reasons. I voted yes and believe it is the overall record in the SEC and our road record that gets them in as an 11 seed.

This is the official game thread. Billy will be there covering for us.

I have been working the phones, DM's and text messages this morning to try to get you the latest on the Jerry Stackhouse situation.

Okay, not really. The truth is that I woke up before 5 and couldn't get back to sleep. But this is evidence you're never far from my mind.

Anyway, a few things:

- Regarding the Robbie Weinstein report last night: I wouldn't discount that, Robbie is good at his job and has sources that probably aren't mine and what he reported may well be/probably is the truth/based in truth. Or the truth for yesterday. It is entirely plausible that you can take it all at face value and that the situation isn't changing.

- However... I spent some time on the phone last night with my best source who still (and admittedly this is opinion) sees it as "50-50." I have constantly hedged my bets and stayed away from predictions for a reason, and it's because Vanderbilt is a crazy/unusual/somewhat unpredictable place. And remember, there has already been noise about Renaissance/talk in the coaching world of a vacancy, and I could well see the school playing both sides or being truly undecided at this point.

- I believe that if they don't move on, it'll be that Diermeier leaves it up to Candice and she genuinely believes he's the right guy for the job, or the contract she has worked him into is cost-prohibitive/could land her in hot water, or even get fired. There are not a lot of things that could get her fired but again, being fiscally irresponsible would be on that list.

- If they stay with keeping Stack, holy cow, it's going to get ugly. There will be mass cancellations of season tickets. I can't imagine there being many people in the gym next year. I wouldn't be shocked if people gave up other tickets/walked away from donations just because of the anger over this.

- Don't forget what happened with Stephanie White, where Candice had publicly announced her retention and then (I'm told) got called on the carpet by Diermeier soon after. It took a few weeks but they rolled that back and what I was told was that inability to retain players got Stephanie in the end. Stack has had similar troubles. The constant bus of people out of the program, combined with what that does to their graduation rate, could be the straw that ends this.

- The correct move would still be to announce a change on Sunday and move quickly to talk to mid-major candidates who have a free week between the end of their conference tournaments and the NCAA Tournament (or are done with their season). So I'm still keeping an eye on that day.

- What Candice has working for her is rapport with the university (again, that could get damaged by a bad contract) and, some think, is doing a respectable job of fund raising. And so there could be some mega-donors who have her back--no matter what. (Although I dont' think that saved Zeppos). But I know the public pressure of the job has really gotten to her. Sources who know her have told me that they think the likelihood of change would be more of her walking away from the job than the school initiating change.

My criticism of Candice has always been professionally-based. I think she has done a good job of sticking up for student-athletes in some spots. When she does not feel threatened/esposed, it allows her better characteristics to shine. I also see her passions based around those things, around Vanderbilt history with Perry Wallace and the things it has done to be on the right side of history in that regard. And the school has gone beyond bending over backwards to shield her from criticism and to promote her publicly for those reasons.

But those aren't things that are primary responsibilities of athletic directors. (well, the fundraising is, but the rest is not.) The reasons it's not working are the same reasons people believed on Day 1 that it wasn't going to work. At some point, if there is doing to be a domino that starts a change whereby one or both parties decides that hey, maybe there is a different arrangement that would work better, it looks like this. I'd bet against it but I don't think it's entirely off the table if they retain Stackhouse.

he is retained, and vu directs massive funding ( say $15M , which would still be far less than a buyout ) into an nil warchest, allowing CJS to purchase a top tier sec team ? stranger things have happened. if said nil funding and subsequent player quality catapulted vu into contender status, would fans forgive and forget, and return to memorial ?

Really interested in the responses here.

If you vote “Yes” and believe ADCSL has displayed any individual instances of “competency” for an NCAA D-1 athletic director, please put your money where your mouth is and detail any specific examples within this thread.

Free, in the infield.

350th out of 361 teams in 3 point % as a team . . . as of games played through yesterday.

Sandwiched between MTSU and Dartmouth in the rankings.

While 3 point % isn't everything . . . . look at aTm @ the 355th spot, for example . . . it does say a lot about our inability to make shots.

We have 9 players shooting below 30% and only 3 players crack the 30% threshold . . . with Taylor only recently upping his performance to crack the 30% marker. West with 22 shots on the year leads the Dores at 36% . . . thanks to his 4-5 performance versus Mizzou (That outlier was the reason, in my view, we won that game.). Tasos is also above the 30% marker. but not based on his 5-26 performance in SEC games.

As reported by cbssports.com

Washington will fire coach Mike Hopkins after seven seasons, CBS Sports' Matt Norlander confirmed Friday. Hopkins is expected to coach the Huskies through the postseason starting with next week's Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas .

UW (17-14, 9-11) made just one NCAA Tournament appearance under Hopkins' leadership, reaching the second round in 2019 as a No. 9 seed.

After South Carlina gets its invite this year, and assuming Vandy and Georgia will not, then after this year only Georgia will have a longer gap since its last NCAA appearance than we do -- 2015 for them versus our latest appearance in 2017. If we miss the tournament next year then that seven year drought will be the longest we have endured since the 1988 team snapped a streak that dated back to 1974. (Covid year does not count.) I think this is correct. And not all of that is on Coach Stackhouse, of course.

It is one thing to retain a coach who has never been to the NCAA tournament during his 5 year tenure but what is truly amazing is the fact that we have played on Wednesday of the SEC tournament in 4 of his 5 years. 🤦‍♂️

So if the powers that be end up retaining him, given this stat which shows how bad we have been 80% of the time, what message are they delivering to the fanbase? (And don’t even try to tell us it is going to be different going forward. You are either a good college coach or you are not.)

We are now less than a month away from the end of the regular season, so I figured it was a good time to post an updated Hot Board. I will update this every couple weeks from now until seasons end.

Who Should Be Candidates

Chris Mack (Age 54)

• 278-133 career record
• 215-97 at Xavier. 8 NCAA Tournaments, 4 Sweet Sixteens, 1 Elite Eight
• 9 NCAAT appearances, 11-9 record

Bucky McMillan (Samford) (Age 40)

• 74-40 career record
• 26-5 at Samford this year, SoCon Regular Season Champions
• Three straight 20 win seasons
• Uber successful high school coach in Alabama similar to Nate Oats trajectory

Pat Kelsey (Charleston) (Age 48)

• 258-121 career record
• 24-7 at Charleston this year, CAA Regular Season Champions
• Three NCAA Tournament appearances, 0-3

Alan Huss (High Point) (Age 45)

• 24-7 record this year at High Point in first season as Head Coach
• Big South Regular Season Champions
• Assistant under McDermott at Creighton

Niko Medved (Colorado State) (Age 50)

• 192-161 career record
• 4 years at Furman, 1 year at Drake, 6 years at Colorado State
• 1 NCAA Tournament

Chris Holtmann (Ohio State) (Age 52)

• 251-170 career record
• 3 years at Garder-Webb, 3 years at Butler, 7 years at Ohio State
• 7 tournament appearances, 7-7 record
• 5 straight 20 win seasons at Ohio State before going 16-19 last year, 14-10 this year

Josh Schertz (Indiana State) (Age 48)

• 397-107 career record
• 337-69 at Lincoln Memorial
• 56-36 at Indiana State, 26-5 this year, MVC Regular Season Champions

Mitch Henderson (Princeton) (Age 48)

• 225-120 in 13 seasons at Princeton
• 2 NCAAT appearances, 2-2 record

Amir Abdur-Rahim (South Florida) (Age 42)

• Took Kennessaw State from 1 win to 26 wins and the NCAAT in 4 years
• 23-5 in year 1 at South Florida (a school that finished under .500 in 10 of the last 11 seasons)
• AAC Regular Season Champions

Kyle Smith (Washington State) (Age 54)

• 253-189 career record
• 101-82 at Columbia
• 63-40 at San Francisco
• 89-67 at Washington State
• Zero NCAA appearances, but likely to get his first this year

Danny Sprinkle (Utah State) (Age 47)

• 103-48 career record
• 81-43 at Montana State
• 25-5 in Year 1 at Utah State and leading the Mountain West
• Two NCAA Tournaments at Montana State

Names That Will Probably Surface

Russell Turner (UC Irvine) (Age 53)

• 283-177 career record in 14 seasons at UC Irvine
• 2 NCAAT appearances, 1-2 record
• 6 regular season Big West championships

Johnny Dawkins (UCF) (Age 60)

• 300-211 career record
• 156-155 record in 8 seasons at Stanford
• 144-96 record in 8 seasons at UCF
• 2 NCAAT appearances, 3-2 record

James Jones (Yale) (Age 60)

• 389-307 in 25 years at Yale
• 3 NCAAT appearances, 1-3 record

Tommy Amaker (Harvard) (Age 58)

• 466-313 career record
• 68-55 in 4 seasons at Seton Hall
• 108-84 in 6 seasons at Michigan
• 290-174 in 17 seasons at Harvard
• 5 NCAAT appearances, 4-5 record (4 of these came from 2011-2015, has not made it since)

Lateral Hires Worth Reaching Out To

Kim English (Providence) (Age 35)

• 51-38 career record
• 34-29 at George Mason
• 19-11 in year 1 at Providence
• Huge recruiter with upside

Steve Forbes (Wake Forest) (Age 58)

• 197-92 career record
• 130-43 at ETSU
• 67-49 at Wake Forest
• One NCAA Tournament (0-1)