Jerry Stackhouse was very salty after Vanderbilt basketball’s loss to Ole Miss on Saturday afternoon. He claims that the defeat stemmed from the Rebels’ ability to buy players through the transfer portal.
Meanwhile, the Commodores are broke. (They also have extremely high academic requirements for admission which does not help their case.)
Stackhouse, a two-time NBA All-Star and former No. 3 overall draft pick out of North Carolina, took over the college basketball program in Nashville in 2019. He is 66-79 overall through 15 games of his fifth season.
Vanderbilt won 19 games in 2021/22 and 22 games in 2022/23. It is hard to imagine that the program could do much better, considering its challenges in terms of recruiting and a lack of care among alumni.
That is why Jerry Stackhouse is so butthurt! His program is broke!
Ole Miss moved to 15-1 with the win on its home court. The Commodores dropped to 5-11 with the loss.
Stackhouse took a shot at the victors immediately after the game.
Best team money can buy. That’s where they are and that’s how they approached it. They got it done. It’s about adding experience. You go into the portal and add juniors and seniors.
We don’t add juniors and seniors at Vanderbilt. They just don’t transfer to us.
— Jerry Stackhouse
To some extent, the best-dressed coach in the SEC is correct. Adding experience through the portal is one path to success! The Rebels added key transfers to their roster during the offseason after Chris Beard was named as the team’s new head coach.
Brandon Murray transferred from Georgetown. Moussa Cisse transferred from Oklahoma State and is especially important. Jamarion Sharp transferred from Western Kentucky. Jaylen Murray transferred from Saint Peter’s. Allen Flanigan transferred from Auburn but only after his dad joined the staff.
However, when you look at the payroll of programs across the Southeastern Conference — and across the country — compared to the one in Oxford, Stackhouse’s comments fall flat. There are schools out there who are spending a lot more NIL money in recruiting and in the transfer portal.
Ole Miss is not a basketball powerhouse and Stackhouse is in for a rude awakening when he plays other teams with bigger financial pools. There are much better teams that money can buy!
Secondly, the “high-profile” transfers that would presumably warrant the largest compensatory packages were not a huge factor in the win. And if he wanted to beat them, it is Stackhouse’s job to figure out how to stop them! Maybe he should have game planned better?
Cisse had nine points and six rebounds in the win. Sharp had eight boards. Murray scored four points and secured five rebounds. All three guys were important, but they weren’t the catalysts.
Murray had 12 points. He came from a relatively unknown mid-major team outside of the Peacocks’ miraculous March Madness run.
Flanigan scored 16 points with eight assists and five rebounds. He left Auburn for Ole Miss in large part because he wanted to play on his dad’s team and wasn’t getting as many minutes on the Plains.
Matthew Murrell scored 24 points. He committed to the Rebels out of high school before Beard’s arrival.
Neither Murray, Flanigan nor Murrell were “bought” like Stackhouse thinks!
Vanderbilt is broke in comparison to most other schools in the country. Its booster support is not what it could be. Athletics are not a priority for his school.
That’s a Stackhouse problem. Maybe he should crying about it and win more games!