NASHVILLE, Tenn.--Six seconds remained in Vanderbilt’s basketball game with Georgia. The Commodores had a one-point lead and the ball.
Vandy’s Dylan Disu had the ball on the far baseline, and guard Saben Lee ran clear down the middle of the floor, in the clear by 25 feet.
Disu didn’t spot him until it was too late. He instead got the ball to Scotty Pippen Jr., whom Georgia fouled.
Five-point-one seconds of game time later, Pippen missed both free throws, and Georgia’s Tyree Crump rebounded the ball, sprinted up the floor and hurled in a 35-footer at the buzzer.
Georgia 80, Vanderbilt 78.
If you want to know how little margin for error Vanderbilt basketball has, you’re looking at it.
Lee made one mistake. He missed the front end of a one-and-one with 12.4 seconds left. Otherwise, few players in the history of the program have ever played better than Lee did on Saturday. He hit all 10 free throws and went 12-of-17 from the field in scoring a career-high 34 points. He did this despite playing a good portion of the game with, quite possibly, the least-talented surrounding cast in Southeastern Conference history, a bunch that included four walk-ons logging 23 first-half minutes.
Likewise, Pippen—who played just 9:34 in the first half, but scored 20 points in spite of it—was brilliant. There was an on-point alley-oop to Lee for a dunk with 4:28 left, making for a seven-point lead as Memorial rocked in celebration. Pippen also threw in a floater near the left baseline that beat the shot clock with 2:48 left. And, there was a terrific pass to Lee on a cutter; Lee didn’t hit lay-up but got fouled and hit both charity tosses with 22.4 left.
Afterwards, Pippen summed it up best himself.
“I had a good game, but the foul shots stand out the most," he said. "That’s something I’m going to remember forever.’
Those efforts should have mattered more, and yet they didn't, and none of that is the fault of Lee or Pippen.
“We did enough, man,” coach Jerry Stackhouse said afterwards. “I have no complaints about our effort. We did enough and I thought we did enough to deserve this game. “
Oh, and there was what Stackhouse referred to as “a phantom call.” The Commodores darn-near pulled if not for that one, when Braelee Albert, who appeared to be in bounds after pulling Lee’s free-throw miss, was instead whistled for having his foot on the baseline. If not for the whistle, it’s Vandy’s ball and a three-point lead with 11 seconds left, and maybe it ends differently.
But it didn’t.
It never does any more.
That makes an incredible 33 of 34 losses in Southeastern Conference play, if you include tournament games. Losing at the buzzer on a 35-foot heave to a 31.6-percent 3-point shooter was one of the few scripts left. Cross that one off the list.
Thirty-three of thirty-four.
Sure, it took incredible, blow-your-mind-astonishingly-bad-luck to get here. But it also came against a backdrop of incompetent leadership and years of neglect. No one wanted to admit it, but it was there as far back as the departed Kevin Stallings staff complained on its way out the door about all the things that plagued the program, about how tough it really was to win at Vandy. This was always a possibility, and it's all come home to roost.
The players deserve better. The fans deserve better. And it's going to take a lot of work, and maybe even a few miracles the size of the one the Commodores took from Georgia today, to fix this.
