Saturday, January 5, 2008

15-0!

BIG 97-88 win in Memorial today, folks. Vanderbilt trailed by as many as 14 points in the first half but fought back and hit big shots down the stretch in what Joe Fisher aptly described as a "slugfest" with a very impressive opponent.

Shan Foster put up a cool 32 points and 8 boards on 11 of 18 shooting from the field, hitting 8 of 12 three-pointers. He's now tied for the all-time three-point scoring record at Vanderbilt. AJ Ogilvy chipped in with a nice double-double (25 and 11), and Jermaine Beal came up HUGE with 19 points, his career high.

With the exception of Neltner, everyone played really well. (Ross's 4 turnovers in 15 minutes were unacceptable for a senior, particularly given that they all seemed to happen at crucial moments in the game.) Gordon only had 3 points but dished out 7 assists and grabbed 3 steals.

It seems like someone new every game comes off the bench and plays a monster game. Today it was Darshawn McClellan, who had only 5 points but pulled down 9 rebounds and 3 blocks in addition to handling the basketball when UMass went with its full-court press. He was co-player of the game with Foster. Keegan Bell also played well, chipping in 6 points (2 of 3 3-pt%) and 4 assists in 14 minutes.

This may have been the most impressive win yet. We appeared to be exceptionally well conditioned against a team that loves to run, and ultimately it seemed like we wore them down playing their own brand of basketball. UMass is the best team we've played by far (FYI: they were #14 in RPI heading into this game, we were #9) -- it's encouraging that we can get down to a team like that and fight back, especially since we were able to do it by rotating in a lot of the younger guys. Also, the defense was much better than the score would seem to indicate, particularly given that UMass is the #11 scoring offense in the nation (for those keeping score at home, we were #7 in that category coming into today's game).

61 points were scored by Vanderbilt in the second half. 61. Wow.

Did someone say Top 10? Let's go Commies.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

awesome game. umass put up an incredible effort. but the refs sucked. i didn't know it was an nba game.

Anonymous said...

I think we're starting SEC play at a good time....

Anonymous said...

I can't think of a reason why we shouldn't be undefeated going into the TN game.

Except that playing KY in Rupp still worries me, current shitty record notwithstanding.