Vanderbilt remains a lock to make the NCAA Tournament, but has had mixed results over the past two months after one of the most torrid starts in college basketball.
The 24th-ranked Commodores (22-7, 9-7 Southeastern Conference) have a pair of road contests to complete the regular season, starting with a clash against Ole Miss (12-17, 4-12) on Tuesday night in Oxford, Miss.
Vanderbilt comes off a 91-77 loss on Saturday at Kentucky, which dropped its record to 6-7 since winning the first 16 games this season.
Still, entering Monday’s games, the Commodores stood 18th in the NCAA NET rankings and 19th in Wins Above Bubble — two crucial metrics that help explain why ESPN projects them as a No. 5 seed.
But the loss to Kentucky showed some glaring deficiencies on defense that Vanderbilt knows it needs to remedy to have any chance of making a deep run next month.
Kentucky shot 58.8% from the field, including 50% from 3-point range, and was forced into just 11 turnovers.
“A lot of times, it wasn’t just our defense,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said. “Sometimes it was dumb offense and that hurt our defense. Bad shots or turned them all over. And this place (Rupp Arena) gets loud when you do that.”
Starting forward and leading rebounder Devin McGlockton was held scoreless over 15 minutes, fouled out, and was hit with a deadball technical foul in the second half after hard contact with Kentucky’s Brandon Garrison. Fortunately for McGlockton, the officials did not determine it was a flagrant foul after review.
The Wildcats’ scoring output marked the sixth time Vanderbilt has allowed an opponent to score at least 90 points. It offset a solid performance by Tyler Tanner, who knocked down all nine field goal attempts inside the arc and led the Commodores with 19 points. Tanner averages a team-best 18.5 points and 5.2 assists per game.
Tanner scored 24 points in the first meeting this season between Vanderbilt and Ole Miss, which the Commodores won, 71-68, on Jan. 31 in Nashville.
The Rebels’ only hope of making the NCAA Tournament is to win the SEC tournament in two weeks. Ole Miss will look to take advantage of Vanderbilt’s recent defensive struggles while building off one of its best offensive performances of the season. The Rebels snapped a 10-game losing streak on Saturday with an 85-79 triumph at Auburn — their first win since Jan. 17.
Ole Miss delivered its second-best shooting performance of the season (53.4% from the floor) and shot 40% from 3-point range. Freshman Patton Pinkins delivered a career-high 26 points while AJ Storr added 26.
Storr leads Ole Miss in scoring, averaging 15.1 points per game, and Malik Dia averages 14.0 points.
“Obviously a good win for us in a year filled with a lot of adversity. Not too many high points the last couple months,” Ole Miss coach Chris Beard said. “Just proud of our guys. A lot of respect for the Auburn program, so to beat a team like this, this time of year, I think speaks really highly of our players.
“We’ve had a lot of pretty good games the last month or so. We just didn’t come up on top playing some of the best teams in the country.”
