Vanderbilt Head Football Coach Clark Lea landed 3 commitments for the class of 2022 yesterday, all of whom look stellar on film.

First to drop the anchor was Nashville, CPA High School linebacker Langston Patterson. Langston is 6’1,” 215 pound inside linebacker. is rated as an 87, 3 star, by 247, and Rivals has him as a 5.7, almost a 4 star. And by the time the 2021 fall football season is done, Langston could very well become a 4 star. He amassed 72 tackles last year with 19 for loss. His film is terrific. He’s all over the field and is an enforcer as a tackler. He lays the hammer and the running back or quarterback will hit the deck upon contact with Patterson. I also saw him take an int back to the house. It was a beautiful play. Really sensational football player. Patterson also rushed for 733 yards and 10 TDs as a running back and is a tough, fast, skilled runner. So, we’re getting a tremendous player coming into our program.

Our second commitment yesterday came from Pinson Valley, Alabama High School defensive end BJ Diakite. Pinson Valley is in Birmingham. They won the Class 6A state championship in 2020, and it is also where our great linebacker now NFL standout for the Houston Texans, Zach Cunningham played. BJ is 6’3”, 210. He is not rated yet, but Robbie Weinstein of Vandy247 sports said that BJ will be a high 3 star when his rating comes out soon and could be a 4 star with a big season. ***Just in BJ is an 88, 3 star, so superb.

Our third commit came from Rabun Gap, GA. defensive end Linus Zunk. Linus, a native of Berlin, Germany, who just started playing football 2 years ago, is 6’6”, 235. He accounted for 14 1/2 tackles for loss last year along with 51/2 sacks. Linus is not rated yet, but I’m expecting solid to high 3 star anywhere from 85 to 87, 5.6 range. He’s physical on film and an outstanding tackler.

So, I really like what we’re getting in these 3 players and seeing this is as just a start to a stellar 2022 class. There could be a quarterback committing soon as Naperville, Illinois’s Kaden Cobb, a 6’3”, 180, 85, 3 star is leaning heavily towards Vanderbilt. Will keep you posted on Kaden. 247’s Weinstein is crystal balling him to VU.

So, awesome stuff from Clark. Practice is going on with the spring game set for Saturday, April 17th. I am going to go over in more detail our 2021 recruiting class. We already have 7 early enrollees and 2 transfers. We put on the pads for the first time today and Clark said it’s a work in progress. Keyon Henry-Brooks, our great running back from last season, is transferring. He’s in the transfer portal. So we’ll go with senior Ja’Veon Marlow, who’s always impressed me if he can stay healthy, sophomore Rocco Griffin, who I see as a potential stud at 205, with power and speed, Mitchell Pryor is back for his senior season and he did some good things last season. We have transfer Re’Mahn Davis from Temple. He’s 5’9,” 210 and put up some good numbers for the Owls. And we’ll have freshmen Dylan Betts-Pauley from Hoover, AL. and freshman Patrick Smith from New Jersey coming in this summer. Smith rushed for 1,800 yards and over 20 TDs his senior season for Holy Spirit High School in Absecon, N.J. Betts-Pauley is a workhorse-type back with great size at 6’1”, 220.

At wide receiver we’ll have Cam Johnson, Chris Pierce and Amir-Abdul-Rahman all returning. All 3 are studs and will be key contributors to this football team in 2021. Ken Seals or Mike Wright will have weaponry on the outside as there are more young backups who have stellar ability. Tight end will be led by the great Ben Bresnahan and a good crop of players along with him. Our line has returned guys like Cole Clemmons, Bryce Bailey, and Jonathan Stewart, who each had opted out last season. So it’s good to have them back. We have some young studs who gained valuable experience last year, and talents and size 300+ guys Dan Dawkins and Tyler Steen are back as well. We’ll need to develop our center spot as Grant Miller transferred to Baylor.

Seals is expected to be fantastic this season after a freshman campaign playing all SEC competition under his belt. Ken went to the school of hard knocks in 2020, and showed flashes of brilliance, and is expected to shine in 2021 if we can develop our other components of our offense. Mike Wright is a valuable piece as well with his running ability and his accurate passing. So those 2 will battle it out for the position this spring and summer. Ken has the lead right now based on last year, but they’re both excellent talents.

On defense, we have a large group of defensive linemen. Not sure if 6th year senior Drew Birchmeier will play offense or defense, but he’ll be valuable on both sides of the ball for talent and leadership. Looking for guys like Daevion Davis, Malik Langham, Rutger Reitmaier , Alex Williams and Derek Green to really step it up this season under a new staff. Four star freshman Marcus Bradley and high 3 star freshman Terion Sugick are early enrollees and can help early. Another freshman who could help is Jacques Hunter, out of Georgia powerhouse Valdosta. He’ll come in this summer.

At linebacker, hoping the Orji brothers, Alston and Anfernee, can become the outstanding players they are capable of becoming. Anfernee has been very good for us, and Alston, a senior, was a 93, and 5.9, 4 star out of high school, so he has it in him to excel. We need him to excel in 2021. Ethan Barr played some valuable time as a freshman last year and he’s going to be a good player for us. Michael Owusu is another player who needs to take the next step. Elijah McCallister has unlimited talent, when he’s not hurt, and has shown that he can dominate on the edge. Hoping for Elijah’s good health because he can be a superb player for us. Feleti Afemui is another who can really help us at the second level. We’ve also got some talented freshmen coming in with Michael Mincey, whom the staff is very excited about, and Errington Truesdell, a Georgia native like MIncy, and an inside linebacker also like MIncy. We’ll need to add some linebackers in recruiting.

I’m not positive of this, but I’m pretty positive that Clark runs a 4-2-5 defensive set, so defensive backs will be important. We have the 2 Andalusia, Alabama natives at corner, Alan George and B.J. Anderson. Gabe Jeudy-Lally showed talent at corner as well last season. B.J. was hurt for the season, but is back and he’s 6’1.” Those 3 guys are stellar. Freshman corner John Howse iV, is highly rated and an early enrollee. Will need to build depth at corner. Max Worship, Brendon Harris and Dashaun Jerkins should be excellent safeties.De’Rickey Wright is also terrific. De’Rickey lost his mom to cancer back in December, but he’s listed on the team. Pulling for De’Rickey to have a big year. I know he’s been through a hard time. He’s a great talent and the guys are behind him. And the great Donovan Kaufman will return for his sophomore season. The former 4 star had just returned a kickoff 85 yards against LSU last season when he got injured and was lost for the season. Donovan can be one of the great safeties to play for us and should be one of the top guys in the SEC in the upcoming years along with a stellar kickoff returner if Clark wants him to do that.

Punter could be Pierson Cooke, who did a pretty decent job last season, or Harrison Smith. Joseph Bulovas has transferred into the program from Alabama where he was a pretty steady kicker. They had Will Reichard, who could very well have been the best kicker in the country last season, he didn’t miss an extra point or a field goal, so that opened up the opportunity for us to get Bulovas. Pretty excited about getting Joseph on West End.

Our coaching staff is super. They’re excellent coaches and recruiters. I really like this staff that Clark has assembled. He has 2 former Commodore players in Jovan Haye, who remained on Clark’s staff from Coach Mason’s. Jovan will coach defensive ends. He is a superb recruiter. And Norval McKenzie, a former VU running back who was coaching running backs at Louisville, is now the running backs coach. Norval is another coach who can really recruit and coach’em up. There’s experience and talent in this coaching staff, both from the college and professional ranks. These guys will really be able to develop the talent we have and we DO have good talent on this roster.

I’ll have more on the 2021 recruiting class coming up in the next week or so and more on the team and any other 2022 commits that come down the pike.

We open with East Tennessee in Vanderbilt Stadium on Saturday Sept. 4th. Then we’re @ Colorado State, Saturday, Sept. 11th, Stanford at home, Saturday, Sept. 18th, in what will be a huge matchup for our team, Georgia at home, Sept. 25th, UConn at home, Oct. 2nd, @Florida, Oct. 9th, @South Carolina, Oct. 16th, vs. Mississippi State, home game, Oct. 23rd, vs, Missouri, Oct. 30th, Off the next Saturday, Nov. 6th, then vs. Kentucky, Nov. 13th. @Ole MIss, Nov. 20th, then @Tennessee, Nov.27th. All those games are on Saturdays.

So, looking to get to a bowl game, win as many as we can, and build for a stellar program in the upcoming years. Clark is labeling it a “10 year plan.” He’s not saying that he’s not looking for short term success, he wants success as soon as possible, starting in 2021, but he wants this program to have sustained excellence by year 10. Barton Simmons, the great 247 sports recruiting analyst, is our new general manager. Barton is brilliant at assessing talent and Clark likes that Barton can ‘think outside the box.” Or as I heard one time, “there is no box.” He’s a tremendous addition to this staff, which I’m personally ecstatic about. So great things happening in football.

Baseball

We took 2 of 3 over the weekend from South Carolina at the Hawk. Kumar was phenomenal Friday Night going 8, giving up 3 hits, 2 runs with 2 walks and 14 K’s in a 3-2 victory. Kumar threw 116 pitches with 82 for strikes against 34 balls, a better than 2:1 ratio. He just wouldn’t come out according to Corbs. Kumar was hitting 95-97, and his slider was terrific. On Saturday, Jack Leiter matched Kumar from 2 years ago in throwing a no hitter against the Gamecocks. Jack pitched a complete game, giving up 0 hits, 0 runs, with a walk and 16 K’s. jack threw 124 pitches with 81 for strikes against 43 balls. His fastball was dominating coming in at 95-97, like Kumar’s. He relied on his fastball a lot during the outing as he said his curve wasn’t where he wanted it to be or his change up. His fastball was dominating. He walked the first batter he faced then set down the final 27 hitters. It was masterful. Wow, with Kumar and Jack, if we can get our Sunday guy consistent, whether it be Thomas Schultz or whomever, we’re going to be tough to defeat this season. We lost Sunday, 6-5, just didn’t get the pitching or hitting when we needed it. We had 4-0 and 5-2 leads in the game, but couldn’t hold it and didn’t score a run after the 4th inning. So, need to figure out Sundays. We’ve got a mid week game tonight with LIpscomb coming to the Hawk. First pitch is at 6:30 PM CT on SEC Network+ with I expect 17 year old Christian Little on the hill. Christian reclassified this season to be in the 2020 class instead of 2021. He’s still 17, but shows flashes of brilliance. Interestingly, Christian is the only player to ever play for Tim Corbin who was born after Corbin started coaching at Vanderbilt in 2002-03. Christian was born in July of 2003. Christian shows a lot of promise. He’ll need to keep developing, but the talent is certainly there. Defense has been spectacular and hitting still solid, though South Carolina pitching was a lot more difficult for us. Need to keep improving in that area during the SEC season even though we started out on fire.

At Missouri this week. Thursday’s game is at 6 PM CT on the SEC Network, Friday’s game is at 7 PM CT and Saturday’s finale is at 5 PM CT. Both of those contests will be broadcast on SEC Network+.

We are now 15-3, and 2-1 in the SEC. We are ranked No.1 in the country by D-1 Baseball, Collegiate Baseball Newspaper, and the USA Today Coaches’ Poll. We are No.3 by Baseball America. Arkansas and Mississippi State are No. 1 and No.2 in that poll. But everybody else thinks we’re the best team in the country. A lot of work left, but we’re impressive.

Missouri is 8-12 and 1-2 in the SEC. They lost 2 out of 3 at Kentucky, but won their game Sunday, 5-3. Lipscomb is 7-7 and 2-1 in the Atlantic Sun Conference.

Men’s Golf

Our 14th ranked Men’s Golf team finished third at the Tiger Invitational at Auburn last week. Auburn won it at -26, Alabama was 2nd at -24 and we tied LSU for third at -13. William Moll paced the team at -4 and finished tied for 13th overall. Harrison Ott finished -3 and tied for 20th, while Reid Davenport finished -2 and tied for 24th. It seemed like Coach Limbaugh was pleased overall with the performance. We want to win these tournaments, but he likes the make up of his team and their competitiveness. We’ll keep getting better. Our next tournament is at the Old Waverly Collegiate in West Point, MS. March 26th-28th, starting this Friday-Sunday. Nice course. So, another good opportunity for our team to keep growing and becoming the team we want to be, which is playing high level golf and competing for SEC and national honors later this season. Coach Limbaugh has scheduled us against some of the best teams in the country in every tournament, so that has to help.

Women’s Tennis

After defeating No.31 Kentucky the week before at home, 4-3. we fell to No.27 A&M on Saturday, 1-4. We won the doubles point, but lost 4 straight singles matches. Our No.14 team fell to 12-3 overall and 4-3 in the SEC. Key matches this weekend at the Currey Tennis Center at home as No.21 Tennessee comes to play us Friday at 3 PM CT and No.3 Georgia faces us on Sunday at 1 PM CT. Both matches can be seen on vucommodores.com, the women’s tennis tab. Huge weekend for the women to reestablish their super play this season.

Women’s Soccer

Our soccer game with Kennesaw State was canceled on Sunday due to Kennesaw State’s conference scheduling issues. We’ll now face Memphis at the Vanderbilt Soccer Complex on this Saturday, March 27th, at 6 PM CT on SEC Network+. Then we’ll travel to top 10 Duke on Sunday, April 11th at 1 PM CT. That will get us tournament tough for the NCAA Tournament which starts around April 30th. We are ranked No.3 in the country by the Top Drawer Soccer Rankings and playing excellent soccer. Coach Darren Ambrose has us primed to do some exceptional things in the postseason..