Jerry Stackhouse responds to question about state of Vanderbilt program

Jerry Stackhouse had to respond to questions over the state of the Vanderbilt basketball program after a 109-77 loss to Kentucky Tuesday night.

The latest defeat dropped the Commodores to 6-16 on the season. Trailing by 16 at halftime, Kentucky never let Stackhouse’s crew get in the game.

After beating Missouri Saturday and having that type of loss, there was wonder if Vanderbilt would ever be ready to take the next step.

“I think got to improve on our talent,” Stackhouse said postgame. “I think we have some pieces that are on par to play with that type of team. But our older guys aren’t here with us anymore. We have kind of started over with the younger guys … A lot of the guys that we’re rolling out there are a little bit younger, probably not five-star talent that they got. I like our talent, I like our guys, but none of them are on the draft boards. 

“So yeah, we got a little bit of a bit of catching up to do when you’re talking about, you know, comparing programs, that we can’t really compare ourselves to a team that probably had 25 years of excellence producing pro talent, so we’ve got a ways to go to get to that point.”

The highest ranked recruit on Vanderbilt’s roster is Colin Smith, a former four-star per the On3 Industry Rankings in the Class of 2022. He suffered a season-ending achilles injury back in December.

So being down, arguably, your best player is neve good. In the game, Stackhouse’s crew had to fight out of a deficit but couldn’t close the gap.

“I thought we probably played one of our better offensive halves,” Stackhouse said to open his presser. “We lost one game. Went from having a high of winning a game and then losing a game. The team was probably just  more talented than we are. We have to do a lot of things right to beat that team. We didn’t do it and we think our frontcourt probably had two rebounds in the first half …

“They really cracked the board’s on us and it was brought to us and I think you know, Dillingham, Shepherd, those guys, I thought Reeves was really good. Like every time he raised up it felt like it was going in.” 

Stackhouse is in his fifth season with the program, coming off back-to-back NIT Tournament appearances. But this year, it’s been a rough ride.