What a game last night at Memorial Coliseum in Nashville as the Crimson Tide outlasted the Commodores 74-72 in a key victory for Bama to move its record to 18-10 overall and 8-7 in the SEC. Vanderbilt drops to 14-13 overall and 6-9. Vanderbilt has its work cut out for itself if it wants to avoid playing in the dreaded Wednesday Night first round game at the SEC Tournament at Amalie Arena in Tampa, March 9th-13th. They are now tied with A&M at fourth from the bottom, but do hold the tiebreaker over A&M by virtue of their victory last Saturday Night over the Aggies. Vandy goes to Mississippi State on Saturday, 12 PM CT SEC Network, hosts Florida next Tuesday, March 1st, 7:30 PM CT SEC Network, and goes to Ole Miss the final Saturday of the regular season, March 6th, at 5 PM CT on the SEC Network. The Crimson Tide is projected by Joey Brackets to be a No.5 seed in the NCAA Tournament as of today and playing North Texas in Portland. Joey B isn’t always right, but he’s pretty accurate. The Tide has games left versus South Carolina this Saturday at 5 PM CT on the SEC Network, Wednesday, March 2nd vs Texas A&M at 6 PM CT on the SEC Network, and Saturday, March 5th at 11 AM CT @ LSU on CBS. The first 2 games are at home.

It was a hard fought, hard hat game. The Crimson Tide was 22 of 25 from the line, 88%, which was huge for them. Jahvon Quinerly had 19 points, he was 6-of-12 from the field, 3-of-3 from trifecta, and 4 of 4 from the line. He played a super game. Point guard JD Davison played a solid game as well. He just keeps getting better and better. He scored 10 points, pulled down 10 boards, and added 5 assists and 3 steals. Vanderbilt’s great point guard, Scotty Pippen Jr., had 26 points on 5 of 13 from the field, 2 of 5 from 3, and 14 of 18 from the stripe. Vanderbilt was 27 of 36 from the line, 75%. Bama won the rebounding battle at 41-37. There were some major plays at the end of the game that decided it. From a Vanderbilt perspective, I was a little disappointed at the block call on Pippen Jr in the last 20 seconds. In 1997, Bobby Knight, after an Indiana-UAB game at the Civic Center, expressed his bewilderment at the block/charge call. He said there was no solid rationale for making the call. He was pretty prophetic. The refs have mostly been calling it a charge when there is a player control foul. Alabama won no doubt, but it appeared Pippen Jr was moving his feet laterally in stable guarding position and the Alabama player, Darius Miles, elbowed him in the chest and knocked him over. The ref called a block. It was close, but as a VU fan, of course I would have liked to have seen that called a charge. But Vanderbilt missed a point blank layup with 12 seconds left and the Crimson Tide made a nice comeback from a halftime deficit and outplayed the Commodores in the second half. I think this Crimson Tide team, if they can get good leadership going forward from Jaden Shackelford and Quninerly, and Davison keeps getting better and better and playing to his potential as a 5 star in the 2021 class, and the guys down low keep playing hard, James Rojas, Darius Miles, Charles Bediako and Noah Gurley, who’s a fantastic player, can make some noise in March. This team is not where last year’s team was at this point, but it does have the talent to reach a Sweet 16 and do even better. The SEC is so stellar this season, Auburn, Kentucky, Arkansas, even LSU and Alabama have a chance to really make some noise deep into March.

Phil Mickelson

Just a lot of controversy surrounding his comments. Rory called Mickelson’s comments, “Naive, selfish, egotistical, ignorant.” Rory tells it like it is and I love it. Billy Horschel called the comments, “idiotic.” Jon Rahm and JT said the same thing. Not one of the big name players is going to the Saudi League. It looks like it’s FIGJAM, Adam Scott, Lee Westwood, Paul Casey and Ian Poulter. Good luck with that Norman. Mickelson has been dropped by KPMG, the accounting firm, and other sponsors are on the verge of doing the same thing. A friend of mine, CO, told me there’s going to be a book coming out about Mickelson later this year that details all of his massive gambling losses. I keep going back to the point of how can a guy who is worth $400 million and makes $25 million a year all from his PGA Tour career and what it’s done for him, complain about anybody else being “greedy and arrogant.” It’s just a bunch of idiotic nonsense. He deserves all the criticism he is getting right now and will receive going forward. Just an arrogant guy, who may very well have ruined his reputation. It’ll be tough to get that back.

Winner this week at the Honda Classic

It will be played at PGA National, Champion Course, in Palm Gardens, FL. It’s a 7,125 yard, Par 70 and one of the toughest courses on tour and features the “Bear Trap” No’s. 15-17. The Bear Trap played a combined 230 over par last year, and 1,604 balls have found the water on that stretch since 2007. A lot of wind and a lot of water. The weather is nice low 80’s, no rain, winds 13 on Thursday, 11 on Friday, 10 on Saturday and 8 on Sunday. So it’ll be riveting on those 3 holes that will make or break the tournament for the contenders. The defending champion is Matt Jones. Last week’s champion at the Genesis Invitational was Joauquin Niemann. The 23 year old from Santiago, Chile finished -19, 2 clear of Collin Morikawa. He earned over $2 million for his victory. Not a bad way to make a living if you’re willing to work for it.

Sungjae Im is the favorite at 14/1. Daniel Berger is 16/1. Niemann is 16/1. Brooks Koepka is 20/1. Louis Oosthuizen is 20/1, Tommy Fleetwood is 20/1. Shane Lowry is 22/1. Billy Horschel is 27/1. Defending champion Matt Jones is 29/1. Matthew Wolff is 34/1. Russell Knox is 41/1. Patrick Reed is 41/1. Gary Woodland is 45/1. I’ll take the 43 year old from Winfield, Illinois originally, by way of Duke University. He’ll be watching with interest tonight as his No.7 Blue Devils are in Charlottesville to take on Virginia. Duke is 23-4 and UVA is 17-10, but 11-6 in the ACC and trying to enhance its NCAA Tournament resume. Duke leads the ACC at 13-3, and the entire Duke nation wants to send Coach K out as a national champion. Virginia went to Duke a couple of Mondays ago and knocked them off, so this should be a stellar game with the intensity high. 6 CT on ESPN. There’s a new book out on Coach K by Ian O’Connor, who wrote a terrific book on Bill Belichick that I read, so looking forward to reading that. I’ll give you a report on it.

With that said, I love what this guy said about the Mickelson controversy. He said for a guy who was broke on the mini tours for 6 years, he doesn’t understand at all what Mickelson is complaining about. This guy has paid his dues. A veteran in Matt Jones, 40 at the time, won last year, so I’ll take this savvy veteran to win at the Champion Jack Nicklaus redesigned course from original designer Tom Fazio. He’s 120/1. I’l take my chances.

Kevin Streelman