Vanderbilt head coach Jerry Stackhouse's teams have always gotten better as their seasons have worn on.

That isn't inherently a bad thing, but if Stackhouse's group is going to have any chance at reaching the NCAA Tournament in his fifth year it has to have a higher level of play from day one.

This isn't a group that can afford to sleepwalk through conference play. There has to be a sense of urgency here. The 7-6 record that Vanderbilt had heading into its first Southeastern Conference game in 2022-23 won't do it. That likely won't even get it close.

Neither will losses to mid-major opponents or a lack of upper-quad wins like the Commodores had last season. Last season, the Commodores dropped buy games to Southern Miss and Grambling State while finishing the slate without a quad one win.

That was partly due to scheduling, as well as poor execution on the floor.

As Stackhouse's fifth season comes, so does hope in a new scheduling philosophy as well as the notion that Vanderbilt's veteran backcourt can help the Commodores get this thing moving quicker than in the earlier parts of Stackhouse's tenure.

The Vanderbilt staff seems to have seen the error in their ways after opening the 2022-23 slate with Memphis and loading up on high-level midmajors on the road.

Stackhouse will now give his group some margin for error with four-straight buy games to open the season, the Commodores will play four other buy games before it heads into Southeastern Conference play.

That should make for eight early-season wins. If Vanderbilt can accomplish that and take three or four off of Memphis, Texas Tech, Boston College, Arizona State/BYU and San Francisco it likely won’t have to be tremendous in SEC play to find itself in the NCAA Tournament field.

A 11-12 win non-conference state could put Vanderbilt in a NET range that allows it to roll in to SEC play with some confidence and perhaps more importantly, less weight on its back.

That would allow Vanderbilt to follow the blueprint that Mississippi State set last season. The Bulldogs went just 8-10 in SEC play and lost to Vanderbilt at Memorial Gymnasium but still found a way into the NCAA Tournament.

That was due to a fabulous non-conference slate in which Mississippi State started out 11-0 and boosted its metrics enough to survive a slump in league play.

A strong non-conference slate with some rèsumè building wins and a boosted margin of victory could do the same for Vanderbilt.

Stackhouse seems to have built this schedule in a significantly better way than he has in the past, perhaps his team can reap the benefits of that early on.