Column: This May be the Turning Point Vanderbilt Baseball Needed – Sports Illustrated

Did Vanderbilt baseball just turn its season outlook around? Quite possibly.
Vanderbilt baseball went on the road to Kentucky Sunday afternoon and took down the Wildcats 13-6 in the series finale to snap a streak of two consecutive conference series losses and for its first series win on the road this season.
The road struggles for Vanderbilt this season have been real. Entering the weekend, Vanderbilt was 3-10 away from home, but taking two of three games in Lexington helped improve that record a little bit. While a 5-11 record away from Hawkins Field is not anything to brag about, this series win means something much bigger than how the Commodores have looked on the road.
After Vanderbilt lost the first game of the series in heartbreaking fashion due to a blown lead in the final inning that ended in a walkoff grand slam, the series and the season outlook looked bleak. The Commodores lost the weekend game that its top starting pitcher was playing in and still had two games left, one with a starting pitcher that was not named until just a couple of hours before the game.
But, Vanderbilt’s bats came alive and tied the series with a 8-7 win over Kentucky before Sunday’s victory. And with that, this series win feels like this could be the turning point that Vanderbilt was looking for. At the very least, the season trajectory and the NCAA Tournament hopes improved without question.
Vanderbilt has been looking for a spark in its season that has featured injuries, a lack of pitching depth as a result of those injuries and inconsistent play with its offense at times, especially on the road.
Was this series the one where the whole season turns around? It could be. Did this series win just make the path to the postseason a lot easier? Absolutely.
It was only one game, but one game can make a world of difference. Instead of dropping to 8-10 in SEC play, Vanderbilt now finds itself at 9-9 and in the thick of conference standings as the SEC Tournament sits exactly one month away. With the series win, Vanderbilt also adds two wins over a team ranked in the top 25 in the RPI going into today.
When thinking about what it will take for Vanderbilt to get to the NCAA Tournament record-wise, it is plausible to think that teams that go 15-15 or better in the SEC should expect to make the tournament. What Sunday’s win did now lighten the burden for the work the Commodores need to do the next four weeks. Had Vanderbilt not won this series, it would have probably needed to win one of the Texas or Alabama series in the next couple of weeks barring sweeps over Missouri and South Carolina. But by taking two of three in Kentucky, Vanderbilt’s path to what could be the magic number of 15 conference wins clears up much better.
College baseball is an interesting game that can change at a weekend’s pace. The narrative and trajectory of a team’s season can change after one series, and that is what Vanderbilt might have just done. 
That does not ignore the flaws in this team, though. The pitching concerns are still very much existing and the offense can still leave too many guys one base at times as well. But there is no denying how crucial this series win for Vanderbilt was. That is not to say that the Commodores are a leading contender in the conference, but the hopes of making it into the NCAA Tournament field are definitely elevated.
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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