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Vanderbilt's disappointing season ends with one final letdown

Vanderbilt's disappointing season ends with one final letdown

Congrats to Vanderbilt on clinching membership in an exclusive club with its 70-50 First Four loss to Wichita State on Tuesday night.

The Commodores secured a spot next to LSU, UCLA and Georgetown among college basketball's biggest disappointments.

Vanderbilt returned nearly every key player from a team that appeared to be trending upward after winning eight of its final 10 league games last season to reach the NIT. Among those returners was 7-foot NBA prospect Damian Jones, rapidly improving point guard Wade Baldwin and an array of lethal shooters with which to surround them.

Between Vanderbilt's talent-laden roster and the SEC's lack of depth behind Kentucky and Texas A&M, it's hard to believe the Commodores couldn't accomplish more this season. They boasted a top 40 offense and defense nationally, yet it didn't consistently translate into favorable results.

They lost to the four best teams on their non-conference schedule and started 0-3 in SEC play. They rallied back into striking distance for an NCAA bid in late February by reeling off six wins in their final seven league games. Then they crashed and burned again, losing to a 12th-seeded Tennessee team in the opening game of the SEC tournament to needlessly put their NCAA tournament hopes into serious jeopardy.

There was minimal reason to believe Vanderbilt would receive a bid considering its 19-13 overall record and its whopping two victories over RPI top 50 teams, but the committee improbably gave the Commodores a reprieve. They were sent to the First Four against an experienced, strong-willed Wichita State team, a formidable challenge to be sure yet also a golden opportunity to shed the label of underachievers.

To say Vanderbilt didn't exactly cover itself in glory Tuesday night in Dayton is a massive understatement.

Jones, the center who announced before the season his junior year would be his last at Vanderbilt, played like he had one foot out the door already. Despite a massive size advantage over Wichita State's frontline, the 7-footer went scoreless until the 14-minute mark of the second half and tallied only five points in 26 foul-plagued minutes.

Fellow starters Baldwin, Luke Kornet, Matthew Fisher-Davis and Jeff Roberson weren't much better,  shooting a combined 7-for-34 from the field and 1-for-14 from behind the arc. Vanderbilt sank only seven field goals the entire second half against a Wichita State defense among the best in the nation, enabling the Shockers to blow open a game that had been tied at halftime and advance to face sixth-seeded Arizona on Thursday.

The stench of this season's disappointment could be tough for Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings to wash off.

Stallings has reached the NCAA tournament seven times in 16 decorated seasons at Vanderbilt, but his best teams have not distinguished themselves lately. The Festus Ezeli-Jeff Taylor-John Jenkins nucleus produced only one NCAA tournament win during their time at Vanderbilt. This year's similarly promising roster couldn't even match that.

When it appeared that Vanderbilt was destined to miss the NCAA tournament six weeks ago, the school's student newspaper ran a column with the headline, "We need to fire Stallings."

Severing ties with the most successful coach in school history would be a bold, controversial move, but perhaps a fresh start might be beneficial for both sides.