Coach Jerry Stackhouse slapped a reporter’s question back at him as fast as he may have an opponent’s jump shot back in his playing days.

“Our morale ain’t been bad,” Stackhouse snapped back, when asked if a win like Vandy’s 99-90 victory over LSU could improve morale. “Our guys don’t hang our head. They come to work every day."

In one way, he’s got to be right. That’s really the only way to explain how this was possible.

This season was always going to be a challenge. The Commodores, losers of 20 in a row to end last season, absolutely looked like an improved team with an 8-6 start to the year.

But there were always going to be challenges, and when the Commodores lost Aaron Nesmith’s 23 points a night and his dead-eye accuracy from 3-point range, they looked dead in the water, losing their first five conference games without him by an average of 20.2 points per game, averaging 55.2 points a night.

Then, something happened. Vandy took Kentucky to the final minute in Lexington, and did the same to Florida in Nashville. It looked like a different team, but the reality was, the Commodores still couldn’t close.

Tonight, two things stood out that the Commodores were about to head down that well-worn path.

Vandy saw a 13-point, late-first-half lead dwindle to five. That lead was built on the back of Max Evans’s 25 points, and given that was nine higher than his single-game career high over 81 career games, odds of a repeat weren’t good. With Dylan Disu—one of the few players on the team capable of putting together a big scoring half—getting in early foul trouble early in the second half (he’d eventually foul out), that got a whole lot tougher.

Vandy hung on, anyway, but not by much. LSU hadn’t led since the 6:44 mark of the first half, but surged ahead, 82-80, when Skylar Mays hit a fast-break lay-up, got fouled and hit the free throw. That lead was three about a minute later.

And then, a different path emerged.

A couple of freshmen pitched in to stop the bleeding. Scotty Pippen Jr. had a fast-break lay-up to get it down to one, then, Jordan Wright picked up a steal around mid-court and converted a lay-up.

And then, Vandy did the one thing it hasn’t done in eons: It started pulling away.

Saben Lee snagged a rebound and got it to Pippen, who laid in in on the other end. Lee then took over, getting in the paint time and time again. There was a three-point play with 3:06 left and lay-ups at 2:12 and 1:54.

Still, the lead was only six with a minute and a half left. Vandy had possession of the ball, with the shot clock running down, the kind of possession it has wasted time and time again the last two years.

This time, Pippen got a great look at the top of the key with about two seconds left on the clock and buried it.

The crowd erupted. Vandy led by nine with 1:08 left. That's when you could finally feel the ghost of a 28-game league losing streak leaving the building.

Let’s circle back to Stackhouse, who showed up at his press conference drenched because Matthew Moyer had dumped a cooler of water him in the locker room. Stackhouse doesn’t like to talk about the streak, and I don’t blame him. It becomes a cancer hard for anyone to break free of, especially 18-to-22-year-olds playing without their best player.

But even he had to grudgingly acknowledge it afterwards.

“Glad we got that monkey off our back and ya’ll can write something else,” he said.

It's an approach I can respect.

Last year in the same situation, coach Bryce Drew was still bringing up the absence of his best player, Stackhouse, in the same spot, allowed it to linger for one miserable game against Texas A&M and to my knowledge hasn’t really brought it up again.

That's why he objected to the morale question. It's a refusal to let that seep into the culture.

This win is huge. But it’s not just the win, it’s the fact that, for the third-straight game, Vanderbilt went toe to toe with an NCAA tournament-caliber opponent. It’s astonishing progress for a team that just a week and a half ago, didn’t seem to stand a chance of beating anyone left on the schedule.

Stackhouse has staked his chips on his coaching acumen. Much has been made of his recruiting, and absolutely, that’s something that’s got to be addressed. But for tonight, let's push that to the side and focus on another truth, which is the fact that he appears to be very good at the thing that's his focus.

“They were ready for all our defenses,” LSU coach Will Wade said, adding later, “I know he’s a tremendous coach. He puts in like 10 new sets every game.”

There’s also talent development.

Pippen had 13 points and took charge late like you’d want your point guard to do in that spot. Wright’s spurt late was huge. Evans got 31 points and hit seven 3s, something no one saw coming in their wildest dreams.

And then there was Lee, who’s gone from a guy who saw constant double-teams and couldn’t find room to breathe, to someone who dropped in a career-high 33 against LSU. He added six assists and four rebounds, and has started to look more like a guy who can carry teams some nights than simply being “Robin” to Nesmith’s “Batman,” as was the case earlier.

“He had to spin around like a top all game,” Wade said. “We had three or four different ball-screen coverages on him.”

One of the strangest elements of the night was the crowd.

At tipoff, no more than 3,000 fans were present. As the evening wore on, several thousand more piled in. It wasn’t great in number by any stretch, and with six minutes to play and Vanderbilt behind after leading by 13 earlier, I’m sure most were thinking the same thing. But it also didn’t throw in the towel, got increasingly loud with every basket or defensive stop, and in the end, also got to let go of two years' worth of frustration.

Wins are still going to be tough to come by. The Commodores may be underdogs in every remaining game. But Wednesday, even if Stackhouse doesn’t want to dwell on it for reasons I can respect, I could hear the relief sink into his words in a national radio interview I heard on my drive home in a way it wasn't quite as present as his post-game press conference less than an hour before. He can deny it all he wants, but I have to think this helps.

Call it "morale," or call it something else. But whatever you call it, In the midst of a brutal stretch of months where seemingly everything that can go wrong for Vanderbilt sports has, I don't think anyone can dispute that for one night, it's exactly what everyone needed.