When [It] Strikes Me

Not a whole lot of description needed as this Video tells the tale itself. Welcome to James Franklin’s Vanderbilt:

There’s no better way to present info to today’s ADD-riddled kids than through a colorful infographic. And why not have that infographic compare our can’t-sit-still generation to their predecessors. Click on through for an interesting look at kids today and kids 30 years ago from BED.

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I’ve been busy of late and not keeping up with my blogging duties. Nevertheless, this morning I came across two things which I decided needed a place on this blog.

The first (found at The Awl) is a collection of images from Voyager and Cassini/Huygens which would make both Carl Sagan and Carolyn Porco proud. Note that all of the pictures interlaced in this video are raw image data from the missions… including the brilliant ice geysers of Enceladus. Ungh.

The song is The Cinematic Orchestra -That Home (Instrumental).

Click through to follow up with some fun NdGT adaptations. Read more…

The Commodores finally got of the schnide on Saturday with their first SEC win on a walk off single by Conrad Gregor. Photo credit: Mike Rapp, VandySports.com.

From the darkest of moments, the Vanderbilt season has seemingly turned a corner. Although it would be hard to imagine another Omaha run and the NCAA playoffs still seem like a long shot, the VandyBoys do appear to be having fun out there. After a heartbreaking 1-0 loss to Georgia on Friday, the Commodores erupted upon Conrad Gregor’s game winning single on Saturday night. Visiting Bulldog fans might have wondered what could have caused a near dog pile type celebration, but after seeing the frustration of a 7-15 record at the time and a season with so much promise in which so many things have gone wrong, the raucous victory lap was long overdue.

The Dores have a long way to go to get truly right, but it was a great first step and a pair of nail-biter victories over the Bulldogs were complimented by an easy midweek win over Tennessee Tech. More importantly, for the first time this season, Vanderbilt appears to be really having fun out there and is playing a more fundamentally sound version of baseball.

The Immediate Progression – Getting to .501

Eligibility for the SEC playoffs has been expanded to ten teams in 2012. Currently, only one team seems certain to be excluded. The Alabama Crimson Tide are 9-16 and just 1-5 in SEC play with an RPI of 135. While Vanderbilt is just a game better on the season (and, more troubling, has yet to win any of their seven road games – though six have been against NCAA’s elite Florida and Stanford squads), the Commodores schedule appears softer than the Tide from hereon out. So it seems that Vanderbilt will likely compete with Tennessee (15-10, 2-4) and an injury-plagued Mississippi State (17-9, 2-4) squad for the lower end of Hoover eligibility this year.

Now, it’s entirely possible that the VandyBoys could either click on full in SEC play – after all, the talent is there – or completely fall apart. My guess is that we end up somewhere in the middle of that road. The starting pitching has certainly come around, and if TJ Pecoraro can regain his feel for pitching and have enough endurance to start, Vanderbilt should feel confident in a Sunday win each week (especially with Drew VerHagen and Will Clinard sharing closing duties).

So what would Vanderbilt need to do to be eligible for post-season play?

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I’m getting quite behind in the columns due to just not having quite enough time to keep this up to date.  I’d be lying if the 7-14 start to the season didn’t have something to do with that.

Since I last posted, the VandyBoys had a rough go of it in Florida (as expected) and lost a heart breaker to Evansville on Tuesday.  With 33 games left on the regular season schedule, qualifying for NCAA post-season play is now looking more and more unlikely.

The Immediate Progression — Where the Season Goes From Here

To be eligible for a Regional, a team must be at least one game over .500 after the conference tournament in Hoover.  Sitting at seven games under, Vandy can’t feel comfortable entering Hoover unless they’re already at that point, necessitating something along the lines of a 21-12 finish to the regular season (permitting a 1-2 record at Hoover).

Ty Beede will be back in the Saturday starter role this weekend against Georgia. Vanderbilt needs him to come up big against All-SEC righty Michael Pallazone of the Bulldogs. Photo Credit: Mike Rapp, VandySports.com.

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Riley Reynolds had quite the day on Wednesday, hammering his first career homerun and winning the #RileySonnyHomeRunChallenge over Sonny Gray. Photo by Mike Rapp, VandySports.com.

I’ve been busy of late and it’s been hard to stay on my regular weekly schedule for these. I’m going to try to catch up again this weekend after the Florida series and cheering my lungs out for Stevie Thunder and the #VUnit in the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

The big news for the weekend is Ty Beede reentering the weekend rotation, pitching on Sunday in place of Sam Selman. That sets the matchups against consensus #1 Florida as

• Friday, 6 CT — LHP Kevin Ziomek (2-1, 3.09) vs. RHP Hudson Randall (2-0, 3.65);
• Saturday, 12 CT — RHP Drew VerHagen (2-1, 3.93) vs. LHP Brian Johnson (2-0, 4.12); and
• Sunday, 12 CT — RHP Beede (0-2, 7.24) vs. RHP Jonathon Crawford (1-1, 5.71).

Saturday’s game will air on CSS/ESPN3.com, while Friday and Sunday are viewable in HD by subscribing monthly to GatorVision.tv(not covered by CBS All-Access).

In the meantime, how about Riley Reynolds. The career .317 hitter had no homeruns (and few balls that even threatened to leave the park) in his first 622 plate appearances as a Commodore. In appearance number 623, he changed all that by putting a charge into a ball to right on Wednesday night against Sienna. His homerun put the exclamation point on a much needed midweek sweep in which the Commodores finally started to look like the Omaha-bound team they were a year ago.

Click through for video of the homer, Riley’s post-game interview and a look back to 2011 with the Baseball Banquet video package produced by Will Hinson (@TheVUCount). Read more…

It’s time to get it on. The beloved Commodores are the reigning SEC Tournament Champions after unseating #1 Kentucky in New Orleans. I’m hanging my hat on the first round curse coming to an end against Harvard this year and I genuinely believe the Dores will be cutting down the East Regional nets in a couple weeks.

Sadly, I cannot overcome with my heart what my head tells me. The Wildcats are the best team in America and should give Coach Calipari his long sought title. For as much as I loathe all things Big Blue, they are my pick to win it all, with UNC facing them in the championship after knocking off Vanderbilt. Missouri is my other Final Four contender.

After the jump, a bracket based on tuition costs which gives the Commodores a true victory. Read more…

What would you get if you mixed American Psycho with Donnie Darko? I’m not sure it would be a blockbuster, but director Daniel Wolfe gave it a shot with the music video for The Shoes’ “Time to Dance.” Filmed in France, it is cinematic in scope, if cut more as a trailer. Altogether pretty awesome.

Spencer Navin was the catalyst for a Vanderbilt sweep over the weekend. Photo credit: Mike Rapp, VandySports.com.

A brutal week at work kept me from my bed, my social life and my blogging activity. That doesn’t mean I didn’t have time to follow the VandyBoys games, but I wasn’t able to do last week’s Week Behind, Week Ahead. As a result, I’m giving you a double dose today, though I’ll keep the recaps short so as to prevent this from being an entry of whopping proportions.

The last six games were a mix of bad and good. Vanderbilt jumped all over Oakland for the first win of the season midweek. The Dores looked pretty ugly against Oregon, though they weren’t steamrolled as against Stanford. Nevertheless, the poor defense and wildness on the mound led to a similar three game sweep. In the midweek, the Dores looked awful against Louisiana Tech, but righted the ship with a double header and then weekend sweep against URI.

That double header sweep was a big plus for the Dores. Entering the game at six games under .500, the Commodores have to start worrying about eligibility for the NCAA tournament. We saw in 2011 two SEC squads (Auburn and Georgia) have their potential NCAA bids hinge on getting over the .500 mark for their season records. Auburn failed to make it, while Georgia snuck into a bid. Like Vanderbilt, the Bulldogs started off the season rough, before seeing the spinal injury to Johnathan Taylor somehow jumpstart UGA into a change in attitude. While, thankfully, no such incident occurred at the Hawk, one can hope the Dores saw their turnaround in the doubleheader sweep.

The Immediate Progression – Getting Right

Baseball is a funny game. A great team can look great one day and horrible the next. But generally teams build on momentum. After being steamrolled by Stanford, that momentum was all the way on the negative. While an overmatched Oakland squad couldn’t put up much of a fight two Wednesdays ago, the bugaboos reared their ugly head against Oregon. Vandy’s pitchers tried to be too perfect and/or came down with cases of the yips. Walks, hit batsman and 3-1 counts all lead to bad results, and the Commodore staff was allowing far too many leadoff batters to reach. Combine that with an infield defense that has committed 14 errors through 11 games and you have real problems.

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As with many of the Commodore bats, sophomore slugger Conrad Gregor struggled to get anything going at the plate. (Photo Jimmy Jones)

Vanderbilt kicked off the season before I could finish my season preview, but that’s not going to stop the Week Behind, Week Ahead from going forward on schedule. It would have been nice to have some had positive preview stories to kick off the new year. Instead, Vanderbilt transitioned from perhaps their best season on the diamond into the worst weekend of the Corbin era out West.

The Commodores took their traditional west coast voyage to start the year, a tradition that has seen visits to Arizona State (DeMarini Classic), Stanford , UCLA (Legends Classic) and San Diego in the past four years. The common theme of the sunset trips has been an unpleasant experience at Sunken Diamond field. While the Dores went 1-6 in their trips to Palo Alto (including a 2009 loss to Cal-Berkley), they had a good deal of success in Tucson, Los Angeles and San Diego, not to mention a clean sweep of the Houston Minute Maid Classic in 2007. So perhaps the lesson here is to stop scheduling trips to Palo Alto.

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