Package The Pain And Get The Heck Out Of Bridgestone Arena, Vanderbilt Basketball; Column – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE—The day could’ve become immortalized in Vanderbilt basketball history and done the same to each Vanderbilt player that took the floor on Sunday. As the biggest roar of the day came in Bridgestone Arena, though, it was followed by a “woo pig suie” from the contingent wearing red.
Now that this is all over, Vanderbilt will have to settle for this being a generally successful week rather than one in which it achieved the goal that it had set out for. 
“We're past the point in the program where we're going for moral victories or just to compete,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington told Vandy on SI on Saturday. We're trying to win, and now we're trying to win championships. So it's the next step up.”
Vanderbilt will have to wait another season for that step to be possible, though. Byington’s team was right there on Saturday. But when the game was on the line on Saturday, it was Arkansas that made the plays that mattered. 
It wasn’t just that Arkansas made more plays than Vanderbilt down the stretch, it boat-raced the Commodores when it mattered most. There were 12 lead changes on Saturday, but this thing ended with an 86-75 final score. 
When Vanderbilt needed a bucket, it couldn’t get it. When Arkansas needed one, it got it. Simple as that. Vanderbilt scored just once in the final three minutes of game action. Arkansas scored nine points in that timespan. 
“They just made some plays down the stretch,” Vanderbilt forward AK Okereke told Vandy on SI, “And obviously we did not. It kind of came down to that.” 
The weekend Vanderbilt had in Bridgestone Arena was its best of the season–it certainly is in regard to its NCAA Tournament resume after it picked up two quad 1A wins–despite the loss, but it believes it left something out on the table. Vanderbilt guard Tyler Tanner told Vandy on SI that this group takes some confidence from the weekend and what it proved, but a number of Vanderbilt players were clearly distraught as the media walked into the locker room postgame. 
This one hurts this team. Best believe that. It hurts for a multitude of reasons. Perhaps most notably because Vanderbilt was right there. Perhaps it’s mostly because of how this group nearly had its best and it wasn’t good enough. The premise of losing a game of this magnitude in general provides a baseline level of hurt. 
It’s definitely difficult,” Vanderbilt wing Chandler Bing told Vandy on SI. “Those are games that you want to win and that you look forward to in the season, but we kind of just gotta be able to learn from it and move forward.” 
Vanderbilt has a simple prognosis on this thing. Arkansas guard Darius Acuff was the best player on the floor, went for 30 points on 20 shots and took over the game in stretches. Tyler Nickel and Duke Miles were good, Tanner was okay. Nobody matched that production, though. Nobody looked like an NBA player playing in college like Acuff did. 
Time for this group to understand that and get the h-e-double hockey sticks out of Bridgestone Arena. Let the pain of falling short in a game like this soak in for a second. Alright, done? 
Time to move on. This group has an NCAA Tournament game to play this week, a Selection Show to watch on Sunday night as it gathers at the Huber Center for a closed watch party. Easier said than done, though. Particularly since this group was right there and led for 7:12 on Sunday. 
“It's hard to just shake it off like that,” Okereke said. “You do kind of have to have the mentality like ‘all right, next game,’ you can't really sit on this one for too long, but at the end of the day, we still just lost the SEC championship and it means a lot. So you kind of just have to have a balance, really.”
Vanderbilt could’ve been immortalized forever within this program’s history if it had won the title game on Sunday–which this program hasn’t done in well over a decade–but instead it was nearly sulking in the locker room while John Calipari’s Arkansas team celebrated with confetti. That’s why this still sticks with Okereke. He remembers his previous stop–in a one-bid league–where his season was done whenever he lost in the conference tournament, though. That’s part of the reason why there were no tears fighting to come out of Okereke’s eyes when this was all over. 
There’s no glaring, bigger picture issues with this group coming out of Sunday evening. This Vanderbilt team still appears to be peaking at the right time and had the title within grasp. Its disappointing finish in this close game is generally an outlier, too. Tanner says that second is the worst place for Vanderbilt to finish, all things considered. 
“I think in a good way, it'll stick with us,” Tanner told Vandy on SI. “I don't think we're gonna hang our heads about it, but I do think we're gonna remember the things we did wrong and try to fix them soon.”
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Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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