Injuries taking major toll on Vanderbilt's season

The season-ending hamstring injury to Vanderbilt starting quarterback Larry Smith is one of just many injuries to key players that have contributed to the Commodores' disappointing 2-7 season.

TE Austin Monahan suffered a season-ending ACL Oct. 17 against Georgia. S Ryan Hamilton (torn pectoral muscle) and OT James Williams (broken ankle) have not played since being injured Sept. 12 against LSU. Three weeks ago at Army, LB Tristan Strong suffered a season-ending knee injury. In all, 12 Commodores are out for the season or have missed a significant portion of the season with injuries.

To make things worse, Vanderbilt is the only school in the SEC and one of only nine nationally that will play on 12 consecutive Saturdays this season - without an off week.

"There's been a bunch, for injuries and other reasons, we've lost a great many of players that we were counting on this year,'' Vanderbilt coach Bobby Johnson said. "One other year, I think when I was a head coach at Furman, we had a similar year with probably about the same results. But it's a situation where somebody has to step up and take the place of those players you were counting on and you have to try to prepare them as best you can when that happens. You try to dig deep down in your depth, or lack of depth, and try to get some players ready to go.''

Vanderbilt will play at Florida, Saturday at 7:15 p.m., on ESPN2.

Comments

[GatorSphere]

If Vandy is playing 12 straight weeks, someone in the athletic dept. needs to be reassigned from the scheduling job.

The idle week is supposed to be USED in the middle of the season. If Vandy is off before the SEC CG, that's absurd because the odds of Vandy ever playing in it are miniscule.

They're gonna get hammered Sat. night. Florida is starting to finally get things going on offense.

[etvandyfan]

The addition of the twelfth game is still a problem for some people since schedules are made out 5 plus years in advance. In addition, some teams had their off week on week 2 or 3 so that is not much better. It is not much of an excuse though Notre Dame did it all the time when they were successful un Holtz and some teams had their off week on week 2 or 3. The real problems for Vandy are injuries and youth at key positions. They lost their number one receiver, and an all SEC defensive player to the draft last year. They did still give LSU and Georgia Tech all they could handle.