Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Call-In Show Notes

Vanderbilt will take on South Florida tonight in the first game of a Big East/SEC Invitational doubleheader at 6 p.m. CT at the Sommet Center. Tennessee and Marquette will play in the second game.

Tickets are still available so bring your friends and family downtown to root on the Commodores. The contest will also be televised on ESPN2 and Joe Fisher's radio call will be streamed live on vucommodores.com.

Here are some quotes from Coach Stallings call-in show last night.

Status of Lance Goulbourne and Andre Walker

"Andre had successful surgery Monday afternoon according to the doctor. It was a completely torn ACL with no other problems and no meniscus damage. Andre's probably 6-8 months away from being full speed and will obviously miss the remainder of the season. He'll be able to comeback and get a medical redshirt because it happened early enough in our season. We miss his versatility and what he brought to our team tremendously, especially his defensive ability and the things he gave us on that end of the floor.

"Lance will be back in uniform Tuesday and he's practiced the last couple of days so he's a far cry from being at 100 percent. He can come in and give us a few minutes here and there. He's worked very hard to try to get back in condition and come back as quickly as possible but he's still not where he was when he got sick. For those that don't know he's recovering from mono. We could be well into next month before we really feel he's back at 100 percent."

On rebounding:

"I thought in the first half of the Alabama A&M game we really exerted our physicality on the boards and I'll be very interested to see what happens against South Florida because we're playing a team that has some size and athleticism. Again rebounding could very well be the key component in the game.

"Some teams have guys that rebound well outside of their area and those are the guys that can really rebound. We don't really have outside of our area rebounders. Jeff Taylor is a guy that rebounds outside of his area but most of the time that's offensively.

"Because we don't rebound out of our area, I think we're going to have to do the job boxing out and it's going to have to be something we're very consistent at relative to our approach. If we're not, then obviously that's going to get us beat and we just can't have that."

On A.J. Ogilvy:

"I think the defensive schemes begin and end with defending A.J. so it's not as though A.J. is the second option like last year when you had Shan Foster to take away a lot of the pressure. A.J. is the focal point of everybody's defensive game plan, and I think the maturation of our freshmen as well as the continued good play of Jermaine Beal will be the key in alleviating some of that pressure off of A.J.

"I think the thing that A.J. has done to compound that problem is maybe he's putting a little too much pressure on himself and trying to do too many things. Last year he didn't have to try to do as much and when he did more, it was obviously noticed. This year as he tries to do more, he gets himself in trouble because again, the defenses are loaded up to stop him first. I think he has to take more of an approach of taking what the defense gives him and then counting and trusting his teammates to do their part and then it will all flow together."

Click Here to listen to the entire show.

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