Paul Lewis shares key to Vanderbilt's late-season turnaround

Few teams, if any, helped themselves more when it came to postseason positioning than Vanderbilt. The Commodores closed the season on a 10-2 stretch, with several of those wins coming in impressive fashion, and finished with a record of 20-14.

However, freshman point guard Paul Lewis said their turnaround wasn’t due to a change in anything they did. In the end, he said it boils down to the fact that, after a season of working hard, they finally earned worthy results for their efforts.

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“I would say nothing’s really changed,” Lewis explained. “We stuck to the same stuff we’ve always been doing. Every day we go in and do the same things in practice, work on the same stuff. Coach always says just work the season, work the game.”

“I think what’s what we did,” said Lewis. “We’re just reaping the fruits of our labor.”

Vandy’s final dozen games featured wins over several of the SEC’s best. To begin with, it included wins over Tennessee and Auburn inside Memorial Gymnasium. By the end, though, it featured a pair of wins over Kentucky in the season’s final week, one coming in Lexington while the other sent them to the semifinals of the SEC Tournament.

Still, Lewis maintained that it didn’t take any serious differences to change their potential NCAA Tournament fate. All it took was a belief in what they were doing and, as we await the release of the bracket, it’s safe to say that faith was rewarded, regardless of if the Commodores manage to make the field or not.

Stackhouse makes Vanderbilt’s case as an NCAA Tournament contender

Jerry Stackhouse wants the world — or at least the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee — to recognize the Vanderbilt Commodores as a serious contender.

Did Vanderbilt do enough to convince the committee that they should go dancing on Selection Sunday? It remains to be seen. But Stackhouse certainly believes so, as he made the case during an appearance on ESPN College Basketball Live on Sunday afternoon.

“I think our best case is just our schedule,” stated Stackhouse, asked to make the case for the Commodores.. “Our conference. Obviously, there’s so many different factors, when you talk about non-conference games, early teams still trying to find themselves. Going on the road. Officiating. All those different things. All those days. Games. But things are more consistent during the SEC play. I think when you talk about the best teams, and us getting in, we clearly proved that we’re one of the best teams in the SEC.

“I mean nobody has a better overall record of winning games, including in the regular season tournament, than Texas A&M and Alabama. That puts us in great company, and hopefully the eye test passes for us. I mean, playing really well down the stretch. Yeah, we had some blunders. One early in our non-conference and then losing to LSU in conference play. But I think our body of work coming down the stretch? If you really watched us play and show how we competed as a team? We deserve to be in there.”

“I think it should,” Stackhouse stated, asked if the eye-test should count for something. “I kind of equate it to my golf game. U should be even-par and then I have a blowup hole on two, and I come out at ten and I have an awful — but hopefully I have a good golf partner. But for us, I think if you’re just going by the scorecard, it can look bad. Obviously that was that Alabama game. That’s really throwing our numbers off.

“We had a game where we lost by 57 points. That’s going to kill your NET. I think that’s what has happened to us right now. But after that, there’s only two teams in the country that had a better percentage, and I think that was them and Houston. Those teams are No. 1. So I think if we’re playing in that company down the stretch, then we should definitely be a part of the best 64, 68 teams in the country.”