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Vanderbilt

Clark Lea explains the difficulty of facing a team coming off of a loss like Texas

Screen Shot 2024-05-28 at 9.09.17 AMby:Kaiden Smith•10/23/24•

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Andrew Nelles (The Tennessean) / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Vanderbilt came in at No. 25 in the most recent AP Poll following a 24-14 win over Ball State. It’s the first time the Commodores have been ranked since the 2013 season, currently boasting a 5-2 record.

But they’ll face a much taller task when they host No. 5 ranked Texas in Nashville this Saturday. It’s a Longhorns team that could be extra motivated after suffering their first loss of the season last weekend to Georgia and fell in the rankings after being the No. 1 team in the nation.

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“I think you can take that and go either way with it,” Vanderbilt head coach Clark Lea said on Tuesday. “When we’ve had a tough loss, the game at Missouri, there’s a world where that can be taken as heartbreaking, and how do you come back from that? How devastated is the locker room? Or you can take it and say the guys will be motivated, they’re so close, they’re going to keep inching towards that breakthrough.

“It can swing either way.”

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Vanderbilt notably knocked off No. 1 ranked Alabama when they were coming off a thrilling win over the Bulldogs in one of the biggest games of the year. Now challenged with facing off against another one of the top teams in the country that will be fresh off of losing on a giant national stage this time around.

“What I know about Texas is that they have a really good team and they’re really well coached, and I’ve got a ton of respect for Sark (Steve Sarkisian) and I know he’ll have those guys ready,” Lea said. “This is a team that has all the aspirations that they should have with respect to playoffs, and national championship, and they were close a year ago.”

Despite losing last Saturday, Texas still represents one of the top programs in the sport. A talented roster with the nation’s top-scoring defense that’s also scored 39.1 points per game on offense this season. A team that the Commodores will look to throw the first punch against on Saturday to secure another massive win.

“My expectation is that they are going to come in here ready to play, and what we need to do in response is not match their energy, but set the tone and dictate the energy on our end, again, to be the best representation of our program we can be,” Lea concluded.