South Carolina 71, Vanderbilt 60: Transition years suck

Transitioning from one coach to a new coach is a painful process, and the transition year doesn’t always happen in the first year. If NCAA Tournament seeding is your guide, Vanderbilt actually fielded a better team in Bryce Drew’s first year than it had in Kevin Stallings’ last year; but last year’s team, for all intents and purposes, was still Kevin Stallings’ team. Every single player on the active roster last season had been recruited to Vanderbilt by Stallings. You can argue that Clevon Brown and Payton Willis were re-recruited by Drew, but they were Stallings recruits.

This year, though, is a different story. Drew’s recruits are on the team, and while I think Saben Lee and Maxwell Evans…