Save the Shield! A Vanderbilt sports blog

I figure this merits a post here, but I’m not actively maintaining this blog.

More on Anchor of Gold. The official site will stream the 1pm press conference “in regards to the football program.” I’m trying to post relevant links on my Twitter, too.

I’ll make this short and sweet. I don’t write enough about Vanderbilt sports to merit maintaining a site for it.

I will be blogging at Anchor of Gold. Here is my stuff presented as its own blog — when I feel ambitious, I’ll try to get the root of savetheshield.com to redirect there. There’s also a personal activity page in case you want to read my comments, etc. across the whole SBNation network. I’ll try to set up an archive on STS — probably http://savetheshield.com/archive, but don’t hold me to it — or otherwise archive old posts over there.

I really do like how SBN is organized, as well as what AoG has built and is in the process of building. Frankly I wish both of them had been around when I set up STS. I still love the discussion at VandySports, but I think the market has shown that intelligent talk about sports is better served by blog networks than by a technically crappy message board where everything expires after three weeks. None of this in any way should be construed to impugn the fine journalistic work the VS guys do. Really, the work they do for little explicit reward is phenomenal! But I’m pretty sure they would tell you that the message board is secondary, particularly the free message board. Rivals’ technical strategy, if there is one, reflects this lack of emphasis. Sometimes you just want to refer back to something you wrote three years ago, you know?

I’m quite certain that group blogging will be more suited to my temperament than trying to keep STS going singlehandedly.

• Old time VU alums would go apeshit. I’d like it. RT @benmaller Big Ten eyes Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Texas? http://bit.ly/80GJ8E #
• This will come in handy in some VandySports discussion or other: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia #
• RT @barcablog good first day so far for vandy men’s golf at ncaa east regional - follow action here — http://bit.ly/dy4HLP #
• Can’t decide if it’s better than the ‘98 Brasil airport commercial: http://youtu.be/idLG6jh23yE #

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• Old time VU alums would go apeshit. I’d like it. RT @benmaller Big Ten eyes Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, Texas? http://bit.ly/80GJ8E #
• This will come in handy in some VandySports discussion or other: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia #
• RT @barcablog good first day so far for vandy men’s golf at ncaa east regional - follow action here — http://bit.ly/dy4HLP #
• Can’t decide if it’s better than the ‘98 Brasil airport commercial: http://youtu.be/idLG6jh23yE #

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• I like this guy Wesley - RT @Wesley_Kaminsky @jeff_green22 admit it..you traveled against Vanderbilt when you hit the winning shot… #
• RT @willpridemore The NCAA recognized 21 SEC teams for their APR scores. Vanderbilt had 7 of them. Good job rest of the SEC. #
• Flipped through ESPN, but they didn’t have the Yankees OR the Red Sox on. Mixup at the network control center in Bristol? #

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• Good to have an “SEC” (not technically) lax rival! RT @GatorZoneLAX Still 3-1 in favor of Vandy, 13 minutes remaining in the half. #

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• Hard-hitting postgame question: “How proud are you of the way this team fought?” They should use that as a case study in J-school. #
• RT @steveleandre Bout to work on my shooting technik. Those guys in the game tonite spent hrs in the gym to better emselves. #
• So far highlight of @2010ncaabowling for VU is Brittni Hamilton’s 279. http://bit.ly/cFlYIe VU 4th but today is just for seeding anyway. #
• Obviously the “Vandy cross-sports postseason curse” is very real. How to avoid? 25 straight losing seasons. Or throw a perfect game on Thurs #

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• No Carolina wins on an uncalled trip foul. Count me shocked, SHOCKED, that even in a terrible season the Heels would get benefit of a call. #
• If evry1 wants to whip themselves into a frenzy about how wrong our stats are each year, then look for scapegoats, not worth bothering about #
• I waste entirely too much time thinking about disagreements related to spectator sports, which is why every other aspect of life in collapse #
• Out of curiosity, anyone know how home team was selected for Butler-MSU? I’m guessing coin flip. #
• Is Butler in a matchup zone? I haven’t watched them a ton but it looked like they were. #
• Maybe just my imagination but they seemed to be doing some defensive switching I wasn’t accustomed to seeing in a man. #
• Baseball trying to fight back, 3-7 @Fla bottom 8th. Sound like LAX is playing well: http://bit.ly/atBPIe . One week to @2010NCAAbowling #
• Stunner: Vitale picks Duke. #
• Actually my brackets didn’t do so bad. 13/74 (77 counting blanks) in VandySports; 2/6 (7) in the money pool. Duke, WV better than most did. #

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Today I finally got around to watching the first half. No, it’s not for masochistic pleasure, and in fact I’ve been emotionally “over it” for a while now. I just didn’t have the free time to go back and try to watch analytically until now. But I think they take the first two rounds down after the final game, so I’d better get this out of the way.

I have nothing earth-shakingly divergent from the conventional wisdom so far, but here are a few observations:

• In real-time my impression was that we gave up on the zone way too soon. I haven’t changed my opinion, but it was helpful to see just how badly and exactly how we got beat. We played zone from 11:30 when AJO got his second foul to the under-8 time out at 7:45. MSU went from one point down to one point up during that time, but they scored 8 points in 6 possessions (1.33 p/poss) indicating how effective their offense was over that short period.
  
  
  More to the point, the Racers hit two very open 3s and missed a third one that looked like a clinic on how to beat a zone. The first involved penetration against John Jenkins, who was getting screened, leading Goulbourne to overhelp and get out a step too late vs. Cannon in the corner. The second involved ball movement, but was mostly about JJ getting beat. The blatantly wide-open miss in the first zone possession (11:18) also looked like a result of JJ’s confusion in the new defense. Now JJ is far from an SEC-caliber defender right now, although I hope he’ll get better quickly. It seems a little premature to give possessions where JJ gets torched full value in deciding whether to scrap the zone, just because he might well get torched in a man too.
  
  
  I don’t really question coming out of the 2-3 when we did, but I think we could have revisited it later in the game, and/or tried another zone/trap later on to throw another look at them. I also think we could have tried it with a different lineup not involving Jenkins, although we’ll discuss the problem with that in the next item. It looked like we showed zone again at 1:38, maybe, but that possession and the next two were too quick to really tell. That left only one more possession with 12 seconds left for which we played man.
• Good grief, Tinsley was awful defensively. I already knew this but watching it again really underscored how horrible he was. More than finding his shot again, I hope he’s working on playing enough D that he can get on the floor again.
• Wondering why AW played more than seemed warranted? His assertive blockout at 4:24, at a time when we were getting destroyed on the defensive boards, is probably one example why. That said, 5:45 was the first instance I noted of MSU sagging off of him, leading to a steal and fast break. Clearly by then they’d figured out how to make our offense dysfunctional.
• Of course Bob Wetzel helpfully pointed it out in real-time, but it was really hideous how badly our defensive switches turned out. I’m surprised that we didn’t start hedging screens, but I’ve never really noticed a lot of hedging in our man-to-man over the years. (I did notice MSU hedging one of our screens late in the half.) When you can’t play man because they’ll screen you for mismatches and you can’t play zone because they’re penetrating on your weakest link, moving the ball and hitting shots, not to mention you don’t block out, you’ve got a tough problem on your hands. To be honest I don’t recall how we solved this in the second half.
• Based on the respective stats going into this game, in real-time I really focused on our poor defensive rebounding, and of course the first half didn’t disappoint. On second viewing our first-half offensive rebounding looked respectable. However, our final number (29.4%) wasn’t very good and I don’t have the breakouts by half, so this might just be my faulty observation.
• If anyone knows the title of the song our band plays coming out of the time out at 12.8 seconds left (the song between the two short “Dynamites”, when CBS can’t decide whether to come back from an ad early), the same one that shows up late in the second half, please let me know in comments.
• Doesn’t Brad Frederick have a suit he can wear for the tournament one game a year? Or was he saving it for the second round? OK, I really am reaching now.

That’s all I’ve got. The biggest conclusion I’m taking away from this second viewing is that we were really in a mess defensively, given that it’s hard to go for long without either JJ or BT on the court. Now I’m actually eager to watch the second half to see how we fixed things. Other than that, at least this viewing confirms some of my earlier impressions, so I guess that’s worth suffering through it again.

• RT @goodmanonfox Source told FOXSports.com that former Auburn coach Jeff Lebo is close to taking East Carolina job. http://myloc.me/56UWj #
• Useless FF fact #1: Butler is the 1st FF team starting with B since Bradley, 1954. 5 total, incl Baylor ‘48, ‘50 #

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