The Vanderbilt Commodores’ 2018-19 basketball season has reached the point at which local sportswriters are already writing the obituaries for the season just five games into the conference schedule.
That might be true in terms of making a postseason tournament; Vanderbilt has almost certainly damaged its resume to the point that the NCAA Tournament is off the table. Hell, the NIT might even be a longshot at this point. It’s certainly not because the Commodores are incapable of competing: even without Darius Garland, Vanderbilt showed the ability to beat teams the quality of middling SEC teams when it knocked off Arizona State a month ago — regardless of whether that feels like it was forever ago.