Jerry Stackhouse provides update on Vanderbilt injuries to start season

Vanderbilt may have thought they could topple Presbyterian without two of its best players, but on Tuesday night, the absences of Tyrin Lawrence and Ven-Allen Lubin loomed large in a season-opening loss for the Commodores.

Lawrence was the team’s top guard in 2022-23, averaging just over 13 points as game as he was the lead offensive player for much of the year since starting center and star player Liam Robbins missed so much time throughout the season. According to head coach Jerry Stackhouse, he’s got a foot sprain, while Allen, a transfer from Notre Dame, is dealing with a groin issue.

“They’re injured right now. He’s dealing with a foot sprain, Tyrin is, and Lubin has a groin strain, so there’s not really no timetable on when they’ll be back right now,” he said after the loss, also offering an update on big man Lee Dort, who missed the game as well.

And Lee Dort, who’s missed quite a bit of time this season, he’s actually been cleared. So now, just about getting him up to speed. He got cleared this week, so we got him up on a ramp-up over the next two, three weeks to kind of see where he is. He hadn’t had any, you know, real up and down competition for over six months. So we got to make sure that we’re careful with that.”

Overall, Stackhouse was happy to see some of his younger players get a chance to show what they’ve got in the absence of some of the team’s top guys — although not having Ven-Allen Lubin available for his debut is frustrating.

“But you know, it’s just, was it was a great opportunity for for guys to step up and get some meaningful reps early on in the game? Obviously, wouldn’t we would like to have our best player and a guy that we really coveted it this summer who we feel like is going to be a big piece of what we’re doing.”

At the end of the day, though, Vanderbilt has no excuses personnel-wise when it comes to losing to a low-major like Presbyterian. However, Coach Stackhouse did see some reasons for optimism defensively.

But there’s really no excuses. I just thought that our guys — we we didn’t perform. I mean, we were lucky to be in the game, you know what I’m saying. When you shoot 32% from the field, you know, give up 51% from the other team and even have any shot of winning that game, which we did.

“So I mean, I think, even though we feel like it was not a great defensive game, and again, they were heavy getting in the paint then they beat us up pretty bad, and with with the paint points. But I think we still did some things good defensively to try to make it tough on them to give ourselves a chance there at the end.”