Vanderbilt doesn't want to fire Jerry Stackhouse, but it may not have a choice | Estes

The view from the SEC’s basement didn’t improve Wednesday night.

Same old. No surprises. Nothing to write home about.

Vanderbilt men’s basketball was likely to get thumped at No. 16 Auburn, and that’s what happened. The home team led for all but the first 40 seconds, and the only suspense was whether Bruce Pearl’s Tigers would cover the 18.5-point spread. (They did.)

For Jerry Stackhouse’s Commodores, an 81-54 rout was the latest example of what’s been evident for a while, with each predictable setback growing more difficult to tolerate:

This just isn’t working.

Vanderbilt (5-15, 0-7 SEC) is a bad team in an awful season. It has lost 11 of its last 12 games. Its five victories were against USC Upstate, UNC Greensboro, Central Arkansas, Alabama A&M and Dartmouth. Its past five SEC defeats were all by at least 13 points.

Entering Wednesday, the Commodores were No. 238 in the NET ratings, a key metric in deciding the NCAA Tournament field. That was 109 spots behind Arkansas, the second-lowest SEC team, and 91 spots behind Lipscomb, 78 behind Belmont and 23 behind Austin Peay, whose season record just dropped to 10-13.

Here’s where you’d assume Stackhouse couldn’t keep his job beyond this dreadful season.

Right?

I’m here to tell you not to assume that. It’s not a slam-dunk decision.

Athletics director Candice Storey Lee, herself a former Vanderbilt basketball player, has long been a staunch believer in Stackhouse’s coaching ability. Her confidence was emboldened by last season’s strong finish, which earned Stackhouse co-SEC coach of the year honors, and I’ve gotten no sense that her faith has dwindled.

I don't believe that Lee wants to move on from Stackhouse – at this point.

However, if this season continues on a historically bad trajectory, Vanderbilt might have no choice other than to make a change, if only to appease fans, boosters and former players and try to restore some interest and excitement to a struggling program.

In 2018-19, Vanderbilt went 9-23 (and 0-18 in the SEC), and Stackhouse’s predecessor Bryce Drew was fired by Lee’s predecessor Malcolm Turner. At the time, Joe Rexrode – my predecessor at The Tennessean – wrote that Drew’s firing was “stunning” and “a reminder of how far this program fell in such a short period.”

Drew had only been at Vanderbilt for three seasons. In the first, he made the NCAA Tournament.

Wouldn’t be as stunning if it was Stackhouse in 2024. He’s in his fifth season, and he hasn’t made the NCAA Tournament. The peak was last season’s 22-15 record and second straight NIT bid.

“It was great to kind of come from where we came from when we first started here,” Stackhouse said after Saturday’s home loss to Tennessee. “The last couple of years we had a couple of NIT opportunities and thought we were about ready to take (it to) the next level, but the reality is we lost quite a bit. ... A lot of things had to go right for us, and obviously, some things definitely didn't go right.”

The failure to build off last season's momentum can be attached to a lack of height and talent and too many transfers exiting the previous team. You can cite injuries, too, especially early in the season.

But that still doesn’t explain how it devolved so dramatically. If this Vanderbilt team fails to win four more games, it’d finish with fewer than nine victories for the first time since 1947-48. Of the Commodores’ 11 remaining regular-season games, seven are against teams in the NET’s top 50.

Can these Commodores improve that much? Can they get hot and close with a surprising flourish, as happened the past two seasons, to provide a whiff of optimism?

In diagnosing the symptoms of a coaching change, the most common isn’t anger among fans. It’s apathy. The lack of support for Vanderbilt men’s basketball has been palpable this season, going back to the opening home games. So many empty seats at Memorial Gym.

It’s a shame. Didn’t used to be that way.

Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt doesn't want to fire Jerry Stackhouse, but it might have to