Nashville, TENN--It wasn't pretty or overly persuasive, but it was what Vanderbilt needed on Saturday night.

Clark Lea's team's ugly win over Ball State kept it all in play. A ranking in the AP top 25 is now possible, so is a College Gameday appearance next week ahead of Vanderbilt's matchup with Texas.

More importantly, it gets Vanderbilt one win away from its first bowl eligible season since 2018.

Saturday certainly wasn't a statement game like Vanderbilt linebacker Nick Rinaldi declared it had the potential to be during the week, but it didn't necessarily have to be.

Vanderbilt has put enough on tape throughout the season to indicate that it's capable of better than it showed on Saturday.

It's provided reason to believe that it's better than the sluggish team that showed up on the field on Saturday and struggled to pull away from a 2-4 MAC team. Vanderbilt has proven in the past that it's closer to the team that pushed around Alabama than the team that often was exposed on Saturday night.

It's sure lucky it has that track record, because Saturday night didn't inspire much confidence. Rather, it looked like the age-old tale of a Vanderbilt team letting a worse team hang around when it shouldn't have.

A team that proved that it can hang with anyone when it is right mentally showed that when it's not, it's also prone to negative outcomes in games that it's heavily favored in.

Vanderbilt is a team that's capable of playing keep away nearly flawlessly. It's also a group that's capable of busts in coverage, drops and an over-reliance on Diego Pavia.

Saturday was another example of that.

It appears that Lea's team didn't learn its lesson from its loss to Georgia State. Vanderbilt's win over Ball State didn't bottom out that way, but it had parallels to that game.

Vanderbilt wasn't the more energized team on Saturday night. It wasn't always the more physically dominant team, either.

The difference between that one and this one is that Vanderbilt found a way to win. That means something.

If it had done that a few weeks back in Atlanta it would be bowl eligible by now.

Vanderbilt has to find ways to eliminate outings like this. Its next step in its program's evolution is the elimination of stinkers like Saturday night.

That's when this group will truly leave no doubt.

Instead, Vanderbilt now has some surrounding it.

Despite that, it found a way to win. As a result, the door is still open for it to dream of what's to come.