After NIT run, Vanderbilt basketball's Jerry Stackhouse finally has a foundation to build upon

Vanderbilt basketball felt from the beginning of the season that it had the potential to be an NCAA Tournament team, even if no one outside West End believed it.

The Commodores were didn't help themselves after losing at home to VCU and Temple, being swept by South Carolina and losing five of their last six games. Injuries piled up and Vanderbilt couldn't get into a rhythm.

But the team that was left for dead found new life. The Commodores bulldozed Georgia in the SEC Tournament, rallied past Alabama and took Kentucky down to the wire. At one game better than .500, Vanderbilt advocated for a postseason berth — any postseason berth. Selected for the National Invitation Tournament, the Commodores made the most of the opportunity.

On Tuesday, their run came to an end, falling, 75-73 to Xavier in the quarterfinals after a last-second prayer missed the mark. But the way that Vanderbilt (19-17) battled back when it finally became healthy and made a run in the postseason showed clear progress in Jerry Stackhouse's third season.

"I think the thing is, when you're building like we're building, you remember those tough moments, you remember those tough stretches of growth and disappointment that we had early on, those growing pains, and we know that we don't want to go back to those," Stackhouse said. " ... That's the recipe of not wanting to feel those moments again, and staying motivated and coming back and really taking another step in development."

The Commodores competed well in nearly every game this season and didn't lose by 20 or more points for the first time since 2014-15. That also meant a lot of close, heartbreaking losses, including Tuesday's. Like losses to Alabama and South Carolina before it, Stackhouse had the chance to draw up a final play for the win. This time, the ball went to his star, Scotty Pippen Jr. It was intended for a three, but Pippen didn't get the look he wanted and the ball bounced off the backboard.

Pippen has been mum about his future, saying he didn't know whether Tuesday's game was his last in college. But, he said, "if it's my last game, but this isn't the way I wanted to go out. But when you look back, there's a lot of good things I did myself as well as this team."

Stackhouse took over a team in 2019 coming off a winless SEC season. It's been a slow rebuild that hasn't quite gone the way he intended. But he never gave up on the vision, and for the first time that vision manifested itself in March. 

If Pippen leaves, the Commodores will need to find answers for his production. It all likely won't come from one player — Pippen, one of the highest-usage players in the country, led the SEC in scoring and dictated everything his team did on offense. But the rest of the pieces are in place. Wing Jordan Wright and big men Liam Robbins and Quentin Millora-Brown have already indicated they intend to return. If Vanderbilt gets top 3-point shooter Myles Stute back, along with a strong recruiting class, there will be something to work with. And now, a team that hadn't come close to the postseason in years knows what it feels like to fight in March.

"You want these disappointing times so you don't want to feel like this again," Stackhouse said." So you get these opportunities, these moments again, you just dig down a little bit deeper to try to get over the over the hump. ... I think we took some some steps this year. It's hard to really realize right now because we're disappointed that we plan but I think once we take a few days and kind of reflect on what we've been able to accomplish over over the season and over the last couple of seasons that we know that we're headed in the right direction, and we continue to build from there."

Now, a team that experienced some of the highs and lows of March is in a better spot to do it again.

THE GAME:Vanderbilt basketball season ends against Xavier in NIT quarterfinals, 75-73

NEW LOGOS:Vanderbilt athletics updates logos, will be used on uniforms in 2023

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on Twitter @aria_gerson.