Clark Lea: Vanderbilt is 'not gonna sneak up on anybody anymore'

The Vanderbilt Commodores earned an emotional win over the Alabama Crimson Tide. Now, head coach Clark Lea knows that his team needs to stay focused as the season goes on.

It’s been an up-and-down season to this point for Vanderbilt. The Commodores have had several emotional games, including a close loss to Missouri and a bad loss to Georgia State. Then, there’s the upset over top-ranked Alabama. Now, Lea wants his team to stay focused and remember they’re not going to catch any team by surprise.

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“As a coach and as a player I think it’s really important that you see the season as not like a bunch of one-off exposures but truly a journey,” Clark Lea said. “And the totality or I guess the success of that journey is really your ability to evolve as you go. So we learned a lesson, and then that’s again, not to take anything away from what Georgia State did, but we learned a lesson as a team that week, which is if we’re not intentional and purposeful and detailed in our process, we won’t be intentional and purposeful and detailed in our performance.”

At 3-2, Vanderbilt is in a good position to make a run at a bowl game. If they do, it would be the Commodores first bowl appearance since 2018. However, with the win over Alabama, Vanderbilt won’t be able to sneak in under the radar.

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“Everything that I’ve put in front of this team, they’ve attacked and challenged and taken the challenge and grown from it,” Lea said. “So, sure, anytime you have either an emotional win or an emotional loss, you have the opportunity to drag that forward and have it kind of stain the next week and I think that can happen either way, but the last two weeks we’re coming off the Missouri game, which is really challenging to us, I saw a team that stepped right back in and really was intentional about their work. Certainly, after Saturday, which was on the opposite end of that spectrum, have a team that’s stepped right back into the works.”

Next up for Clark Lea and the Commodores is a road test against Kentucky. It’s a game where the team will need to avoid a letdown by managing its emotions while also getting a talented Kentucky team’s best shot.

“So, we have to carry that through the week and then we have to show up and be focused and detailed in performance. It’s all challenging and it’s hard. It’s what makes this really hard, but I’m not worried about where the team’s mind is right now. They want more and they’re going to go after more, and they know that this climb only gets more challenging because we’re not gonna sneak up on anybody anymore. That’s part of having a good performance is you kind of show what you’re capable of,” Lea said.

“So, now, it’s out there and we have to continue to level up because we’re playing against really good teams, the first of which is Kentucky.”