Thursday, June 18, 2009
Hannan / Sports Vanderbilt's All-Time Top Four
Posted by Caleb Hannan on Thu, Jun 18, 2009 at 1:49 PM
Tennessee Basketball: Bernard King Football: Peyton Manning Baseball: Todd Helton Wildcard: Chamique Holdsclaw/Candace Parker ... which one was better?**Gotta be Parker, right? Right? Unfortunately, Joe chose to ignore Vanderbilt in both the first and second iterations of his little game. But that doesn't mean we can't come up with our own list. Here's what we've got so far: Vanderbilt Basketball: Clyde Lee (Thanks to JR. No thanks to Woods. Where were you when I was making an ass of myself? Some colleague you are...) Football: Jay Cutler (The easiest choice of all.) Baseball: David Price (Purely on the strength of that awesome Game Seven save in last year's ALCS.) (Side question: Does Mark Prior's freshman year as a Commodore make him eligible? We'll say no. But I think you could make a solid argument.) Wildcard: Brandt Snedeker (2007 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.) Agree? Disagree? Don't think golf is a sport? Please discuss.
Comments (16)
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I thought you said this was about sports. What's the PGA? Some kind of bridge league in Cool Springs?
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Basketball: I give Shan Foster the nod, ahead of Phil Cox, Bill McCaffrey, Matt Frieje, Charles Davis, Ronnie McMahan, Dan Langhi and Barry Goheen (Definitely not Perdue, who made more of a name in the pros).
Football: Jay Cutler, obviously ... with Corey Chavous, Jamie Duncan and Dan Stricker as some players worthy of honorable mentions.
Baseball: David Price. Perhaps Pedro Alvarez.
Wild Card: Memorial Gym (most underrated gym in college basketball; a great place to watch a game)
Clyde Lee is a better choice than Perdue. The expansion at Memorial was known for years as "The Balconies That Clyde Built." He led Vandy to the first SEC Championship in '64. Was SEC Player of the Year twice (sharing one with Pat Riley, of all people). Playing three years (couldn't play as a freshman in those days), Lee scored 1,691 points. He averaged 15.5 rebounds per game (which is ridiculous). He still holds the record for 30 point games and put 41 up on UK (without the three-point line). Vandy was ranked as high as No. 2 when he was there and finished the 1965 season No. 5. They would have been in the Final Four that year under his leadership, except for a dubious traveling call in the regional final against Michigan.
By contrast, Perdue scored 1,281 points at Vandy. In the pros, Lee averaged 7.7 points per game and 10.3 boards. Perdue 4.7 and 4.9.
Give #43 his due.
Of course. My omission of Clyde Lee was not intended.
But honestly, I've been a Vandy fan for years, and no one has impressed me more (both with his play and character) than Shan Foster.
Clyde Lee is the guy without question. He's Vanderbilt's only first-team All-America. It's not even close.
You've made me a believer, JR. Lee gets his due.
Also, Joey, can you expound a little on Foster's character? I don't ask to imply that you're wrong, I'm just curious: What about him impressed you so much?
Shan Foster was a hack. No game except a weird, streaky set shot that looked like something out of the 1940s.
The guy was just a great student/athlete. He sort of exemplified that often overused expression. He also played with a ton of emotion, and is of course the All-time leading scorer in Vanderbilt's history.
But really, what separates Foster from other Commodores is that his signing out of high school represented a turning point for Vanderbilt. The school had just eliminated its athletics department, something skeptics insisted would result in failure. Instead, the school has in recent years enjoyed its most athletic success. Foster surprised many when he chose Vanderbilt over the likes of Georgetown, LSU and Kansas. His entrance paved the way for increasingly better recruiting classes. Right now, the state of Vanderbilt basketball (boosted by the arrival of John Jenkins, Jeff Taylor, etc.) hasn't been better, success that can in part be traced to Foster.
1. Shan Foster
2. Jay Cutler
3. David Price
4. Grantland Rice - one of the first great sportswriters and progenitor of a great sportswriting tradition at Vanderbilt
Second Grantland Rice as a wildcard, esp. with the Grantland Rice scholarship, at a school where the student paper is produced by essentially a volunteer staff as there is no journalism program/major. Buster Olney, anyone? http://vucommodores.cstv.com/sports/m-basebl/spec-rel/092408aab.html
Shan Foster? Give me a break. Over Clyde Lee? Hell, I could name a bunch of Commodores who were better than Foster. Tommy "Gun" Hagan, Perry Wallace, Kenny Campbell, Bo Wyendant--that's four off one team right there.
I think Wallace may be the only Commodore who should be in the argument, and that for bigger social "non-basketball" reasons (although he was a fantastic player). And Hagan had a great nickname.
But, as Woods and I have argued, it has to be Lee.
Woods,
Clearly, you're a UT fan. If you had attended Foster's home finale against Mississippi State then I think you'd be on board. Legendary – and I do mean legendary – performance.
