Ghost of Tommy Owen

The demise of Vanderbilt has been greatly exaggerated because they haven’t had postseason success lately. This is the 6th season post-covid, and Vandy has been a national seed 3x. They were a nation seed 4x in Corbin’s first 15 seasons. Now, postseason success is ultimately what matters, but the notion they were a juggernaut that was consistently top 5 and have now flamed out is just not true. Ironically, postseason success could be argued to have “inflated” their reputation as juggernauts. They’ve been to the CWS 5x under Corbin, but they’ve made the final in 4 of those. Florida, Texas, LSU, & Arkansas all have as many or more since Vandy made its first in 2011. I don’t mean to imply Vandy wasn’t a power, but over the 2010s they felt on another level from these teams largely because their CWS conversation rate was so damn high. They aren’t seeing that now, and it’s fair to criticize their roaster/schematic approach because of it, but a full 14 week season, especially in the SEC, isn’t a small sample size where you can hide being a good team. If you’re getting top 8 seeds you’re not a phony.