Luke Kornet has improved exponentially from last year. Luke had shown flashes of great ability last year, but last night he showed that he is a force for our team this  year. In an impressive 78-46 victory over Tennessee State at Memorial, Luke went 10-of-11 from the field, starting out with a couple of flushes and then draining three trifectas. And the triples were just pure swishes. Luke finished with 24 points and seven boards. Damian Jones added 13 points and eight boards. Damian and Luke can kind of work off of each other, setting the other guy up for scoring opportunities and their rebounding will be essential. Really like what we’re doing on the boards. This is the best rebounding team I’ve seen us have in quite some time. Our young guards are good rebounders. Our freshmen are multi-talented. These guys are ready to be big time performers this season. Love what I saw from Riley LaChance and Wade Baldwin IV. Really like point guard Shelton Mitchell as well. Riley was two-of-5 from triple and Wade was two-of-two. We were 9-of-19 from deep. We are an efficient three-point shooting team. We take plenty of threes, but we are making more with this young group and Luke. Wade dished out 10 assists and Shelton added seven dimes. We did have 17 turnovers, but Tennessee State was a pretty quick, athletic team and we’re going to have issues with turnovers some with a young group of backcourt players. Our two other freshmen, Matthew Fisher-Davis (MFD) and Jeff Roberson, both have some injury issues. MFD is battling a foot issue, and Jeff was sick. But they’re both good players and they’ll get back to full strength soon. I thought James Siakam did some good things. James is just getting back into form as he had a family member pass away recently and had been away from the team. We will need James as the season progresses. He brings great defensive, rebounding and some offensive punch to the front court. Josh Henderson and Shelby Moats both contributed. If Josh can get confident that his knee isn’t going to be an issue (he’s torn a ligament in his knee the past couple of years), he can be a big help with his size at 6’11”, 240. Josh is also a highly skilled player who can score and board. Shelby can too, and he brings good leadership to our group. We play Norfolk State tomorrow night @ home @ 8 ET/7 CT on SEC Network Plus. It’s part of ESPN3. I’ll have a report Wednesday. Then we go to the Big Apple Friday to play Rutgers, and if we win, we play the Virginia-LaSalle winner on Saturday night. Friday night’s game is @ 7 ET/6 CT on the NBC Sports Network. Saturday night’s game is too. Like this group a lot. Can we make the tournament? Yes, and the future is unlimited with Luke, Damian, our freshmen and the guys coming in next year along with Cornell transfer shooting guard Nolan Cressler. But I really think we can be playing in the middle of March with this group. These freshmen are such good kids and they want to excel. They’ll keep growing and improving and they all have outstanding ability. Really excited about the direction of our program starting this season.

Bears won a hard fought game yesterday over the Tampa Bay Bucs at Soldier Field, 21-13. Jay played pretty well completing 17-of-27 for 130 yards,  a seven to Alshon Jeffrey and no ints. The team played well overall, particularly the defense. They intercepted Bucs qb Josh McCown twice and recovered two fumbles and also sacked McCown five times. Bears moved to 5-6 and play a colossal game on Thanksgiving Day at Detroit against the Lions at 12:30 PM ET/11:30 CT on CBS. If the Bears can beat the Lions, which lost yesterday to the Patriots 34-9, the Bears can become a factor once again in the wild card race. The Lions are now 7-4, so it’s an absolute must win game for the Bears. Should be a classic. Defense played extremely well yesterday. The Packers are 8-3 and they don’t look like they’re coming back  to the pack, so the Bears need to focus on getting back in the wild card picture. Have to get it done on Thursday in Motown.

Jordan Matthews with six receptions for 77 yards yesterday against the Tennessee Titans. JMatt really doin work. Love where JMatt is at and Chip Kelly and the Eagles love him. JMatt came out last week and defended Derek. I’m glad JMatt did that. JMatt is a good Vanderbilt man and so is our coach. Derek needs the support right now because we’re going through a tough time. But we have UT at home this Saturday (4 PM ET/3 PM CT on the SEC Network) and we need to get the W. Certainly attainable.

Derek was still his usual upbeat self after the Mississippi State game. He was disappointed, but still optimistic about the game this coming Saturday. Hopefully we can turn it around for the seniors and send them out on a high note. State is a top four team in the country. I have them number three in my playoff ranking this week. If they win @ Ole Miss Saturday, and Oregon struggles against Oregon State, State should move up to No.2. My top four now are: 1. Alabama, 2. Oregon 3. State and 4. FSU. Very interesting weekend coming up with huge rivalry games all over the map. It’s been an amazing season in college football, and while our team has had its share of struggles, Derek will turn it around. If we can just beat UT and get some more momentum going into recruiting that would be huge. We’ve got a good class right now with 12 guys. We just added offensive lineman Darion DeBrossard, a 6″5″, 320 tackle out of Shellville, Georgia. Love Darion’s size. Should develop into a good player. Would love to see us add about seven or eight more. Our headliners in this class are four-star cornerback Donovan Sheffield and four-star linebacker Josh Smith. I really like what I’ve seen from high three-star quarterback Kyle Shurmur. Kyle  has put up some excellent numbers. With Kyle, Johnny, Patton and Wade, quarterback will be a strength for us next year. Also, really like high three-star running back/linebacker commit Dare Odeyingbo in this class. He is a stud running back at 6’2″, 242, and can be a stud linebacker. He’s powerful, fast and can house it at any time. We’ll see what Derek decides to do with Dare next year and in the future. With Ralph Webb and Dallas Rivers and Dare, and also commit Josh Crawford, we should be pretty good at running back next year. We may add another rb in recruiting. Still heavily involved in Nashville Pearl-Cohn running back 5.7 three-star Ke’Shawn Vaughn. Ke’Shawn will be visiting Saturday for the UT game along with 5.5 three-star running back Marcus Marshall, 5.7 three-star defensive tackled Drayton Carlberg and 5.9 four-star defensive back Marvell Tell. Carlberg is committed to Oregon, but hopefully we can flip him on Saturday. High three-star defensive end commit Caleb Peart is a stud as well. Please keep the faith. Derek will get it done. He’s a great man, great coach and great representative of Vanderbilt University.

Baseball had the Black and Gold series last week and they’re out of the country playing in the Dominican Republic right now. Looks like we’ll have a stellar starting rotation with Carson Fulmer, Walker Buehler, Tyler Ferguson and maybe lefty Phlip Pfeifer.  Those guys will bring the heat. Bullpen will develop right now, when spring practice starts in January, and throughout the season. We have Hayden Stone, of course, who is an amazing pitcher, but we’ll need to build up some depth. Really like Ben Bowden and John Kilichowski out of the pen. Both are leftys and had good years last year. I expect excellent years out of both Ben and John. Hitting and fielding should be excellent led by shortstop Dansby Swanson, left fielder Bryan Reynolds and right fielder Rhett Wiseman. We should be solid at catcher with Jason Delay and Karl Ellison returning for their sophomore campaigns. We can win the conference, though as always, it will be incredibly competitive. LSU should be really good, as should South Carolina, Florida and Ole Miss. There are some other good teams. There’s no lay-up in the league. Looking forward to getting started in January.

But let’s win a football game Saturday, get this basketball team cookin, get football recruiting cookin, and start back getting ready for spring football and have another spectacular baseball season. Will keep you posted on all VU stuff.