Jerry Stackhouse on his job security: 'No weapons formed against me shall prosper'

With their dozen-point loss to Georgia last night, Vanderbilt fell to 7-19 overall and just 2-11 in the SEC. That, paired with the rest of the body of work from his tenure in Nashville, has brought Jerry Stackhouse into question moving forward.

Still, as he said following the 76-64 loss to the Bulldogs on Wednesday, his work hasn’t been all negative. Stackhouse feels the Commodores have been heading in the right direction since his arrival in ’19-’20, especially when you consider their improvement across certain ratings.

“Well, you know, it’s one thing about my job is that I got hired here to do a job and I’ve been trending in the right direction for a long time,” said Stackhouse. “I probably heard more things about NET this year than I’ve ever heard about our NET. The last four years before that? We increased our NET every year. I ain’t heard anything about that. We’ve been doing a lot of good things, trying to trend in the right direction.”

However, as of this season, Vanderbilt is clearly dead last in the conference in the NET. They rank 76 spots from Missouri in second to last at No. 224. They’re also the last placed program in all of the Power Five behind Louisville at 29 spots ahead of them.

Now, after last night, Stackhouse is 68-88 over five years in the Music City. There was gradual improvement over the past two years, including a pair of appearances in the NIT, but their record has returned to the pace that it was at over his first two campaigns.

If Stackhouse came off of the hot seat after going 22-15 last year, he is firmly back on it now at a dozen games under .500 this year with five games to go. Still, at this point, he is unbothered by those opinions since there’s only one higher one that he’s concerned with.

“I know it’s a lot of noise out there, a lot of things,” said Stackhouse. “One thing I can say? No weapons formed against me shall prosper.”

“I got faith with the man upstairs that he put me in this position for a reason. Everything that I’m going through right now, with this team and off the court, is ordained,” Stackhouse shared. “It’s stuff that’s going to make me better and I really feel about that.”

Stackhouse’s future is almost certainly going to be a discussion by the end of Vanderbilt’s time at the SEC Tournament in mid-March. Until then, all he can do is continue to coach his team and lean on the people who he feels are actually behind him in this valley as opposed to a peak.

“There was 12 disciples, right? Only one of them was a Judas,” Stackhouse said. “There’s a lot of people pulling for me. There’s a lot of people pulling for our team.”

“I just try to think about those people and make sure that I continue to do my job. Focus on these guys and helping them get better. Then I’ll live with the result from there.”