Vanderbilt Basketball Wins in Dominant Fashion Against Tennessee Tech
As the Vanderbilt community gets ready for their massive rivalry matchup against Tennessee on Saturday, their upstart basketball team was back in action on Friday after they returned home from a trip to Charleston, South Carolina.
The Commodores would have liked to arrive in Nashville as the winners of the Charleston Classic, but a loss against Drake in the championship game handed them their first loss of the season.
Still, the early showing in this campaign has been positive for this Vanderbilt program.
After hiring Mark Byington to lead this team going forward, the Commodores have looked like a completely different group, dominating their opponents in the early part of their schedule before beating Nevada and Seton Hall during the showcase event when they stepped up in class.
Coming off the loss, Vanderbilt got back into the win column in emphatic fashion on Friday, beating Tennessee Tech, 87-56.
The 31-point victory was buoyed by a strong second half after the opening period was a back-and-forth affair.
Vanderbilt traded baskets with Tennessee Tech for the first seven minutes of the contest until they created a little bit of separation about halfway into the half. But, they couldn't keep the Golden Eagles down for long with them clawing their way back to make it a two-possession game.
The Commodores were ultimately able to take a nine-point lead into the break with the score being, 39-30.
Coming out of the locker room was where things completely got out of hand.
Vanderbilt quickly jumped out to a double digit lead and never looked back, using the strength of their strong shooting and defense to run the score up throughout the entireity of the second half.
Jason Edwards continues to announce himself to the Commodores faithful, scoring a game-high 23 points on 8-of-15 shooting from the field and 4-of-8 from 3-point range off the bench.
Two other players joined him in double figures with starters AJ Hoggard and Chris Manon scoring 15 and 11 points respectively.
Devin McGlockton dominated the boards, pulling down 14 rebounds.
As a team, it was another good shooting performance from Vanderbilt with them going 33-71 from the field (46.5%) and 11-31 from behind the 3-point line (35.5%).
The Commodores have now moved to 7-1 on the season.
They'll be in action next on Dec. 4 in a huge ACC/SEC road showdown against Virginia Tech that could finally earn them some respect nationally if they are able to win.
