On a miserable night for Commodore fans at Memorial Gym, Presbyterian, a team that finished 5-27 last season, knocked off Vanderbilt 68-62.

In Year 5, Jerry Stackhouse’s team lost to a team ranked 315 in the NET.

A night like this is, quite frankly, unexplainable and unacceptable.

At SEC Media Days, Stackhouse went on record saying, “We’ve still got competitive teams but it’s teams that we can get away from. Do it like everybody else does. When In Rome, do what the Romans do. We’re gonna try to beat the hell out of everybody.”

That strategy did not work out well tonight.

Vanderbilt played without Tyrin Lawrence (ankle), Ven-Allen Lubin (hip), and Lee Dort (foot). We know how serious Lee Dort’s injury is, but one has to wonder if Lawrence and Lubin could’ve given it a go.

After the game, Stackhouse said, “They’re injured right now. Dort got cleared this week, we’re hoping in the next two, or three weeks, we’ll see where he is. We would’ve liked to have our best player. There’s no excuses.”

Credit to Bryce Smith here, tonight's loss to No. 315 NET Presbyterian is Vanderbilt's worst loss in the KenPom era, which was founded in 1999.

As for the game itself, Tasos Kamateros got the scoring started after drilling a three-pointer for the first points of the season for Vanderbilt. Then, talented freshman Jason Rivera-Torres knocked down a fallaway jump shot to give the Commodores their first lead of the night.

The shots weren’t falling early for Vanderbilt, but newcomers like Tasos Kamateros, Jason Rivera-Torres, and Malik Presley ignited the flame. Tasos Kamateros hit his second three of the night to extend the first-half lead to 8-4.

Freshmen Malik Presley and Jason Rivera-Torres both stood out in the early going, but the poor shooting overall continued.

In the first half, Vandy shot 10-29 from the field and 3-15 from three-point range. While leading for most of the half, Stackhouse’s group could never pull away.

Somehow, the offensive struggles got worse in the second half. At the under-eight timeout, Vandy trailed Presbyterian 51-39. The Blue Hose, a team picked to finish 9th in the Big South, a 9-team conference, came to play.

Honestly, the stats were so poor, that they’re not even worth bringing up. Presbyterian ranks 315 in the NET. This is a loss that will put Vandy in a deep, dark hole that will be nearly impossible to dig out of. This is the sort of loss that haunts a team for the rest of the season. Similar to Grambling and Southern Miss last season, this is the type of loss that the NCAA Selection Committee remembers.

Forget the selection committee though, if the Vandy team that showed up tonight shows up again this season, the Commodore faithful will be in for a long season.

After the game, Stackhouse said, “We didn’t try to lose this game. They were better than us tonight. This team probably wouldn’t beat us if we had all of our parts. We still had enough tonight to beat them, though.”

Throughout points late in the game, there were pockets of Vandy fans booing loudly and some audibly negative comments directed at Coach Stackhouse. This season could go a number of ways, but if tonight was any indication, Vanderbilt fans are in for a nightmare-type season.

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