Vanderbilt Outlasts a Tough Miami (OH) Squad, 69-62
by Christian D'Andrea on Jan 2, 2012 9:58 PM EST
in Vanderbilt Commodores Basketball
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PrintOn the day that Vanderbilt climbed back onto some voters top 25 ballots, they may have given skeptics another reason to believe that this team hasn't overcome its struggles just yet.
The Commodores scraped by a Redhawk team that they outmatched on paper, rounding out their early out-of-conference schedule with a 69-62 win. John Jenkins led Vanderbilt to the win on a night where standouts like Jeffery Taylor and Festus Ezeli struggled offensively. The junior shrugged off a disappointing game against Marquette to score 26 points on 9-15 shooting on the night.
Vandy trailed early and needed a big run to open a 27-24 lead at the half. Miami led 18-14 12 minutes into the game and made the first half a back and forth battle at Memorial Gym. Though the 'Dores opened up a nine-point lead early in the second frame, the Redhawks battled back to cut the advantage to two points with under 12 minutes to play, putting the fear of another Indiana State-style upset into the hearts of Vanderbilt fans. Fortunately, Jenkins stepped up to provide a crucial scoring punch late in the second half, turning away Miami's upset bid.
Miami came into Monday's game with a 4-7 record. Reserve guard Brian Sullivan did his best to earn the Redhawks a marquee fifth win. Every time Vanderbilt threatened to pull away, it seemed that Sullivan was there to answer with a three-pointer. He dueled with Jenkins throughout the night, finishing with 24 points on 8-9 shooting from behind the arc.
Brad Tinsley finished the game with 11 points, most coming at the free throw line in the final minutes of the game. Taylor had 11 points and five rebounds, while Ezeli added seven rebounds and four blocks off the bench. The win brought the Commodores - who earned enough votes in both polls to put them in the top 30 of the rankings - to 10-4 on the season. While it's a solid win for the team, Vanderbilt's inability to follow up last week's dominant performance at Marquette will temper some of the excitement that the win had brought.
They'll have one more out-of-conference game against Middle Tennessee State in the midst of the SEC slate. They'll kick off conference play Saturday against 9-3 Auburn.
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Good win
That win won’t impress a lot of of voters, but I though it was solid. JT didn’t have his best game offensively. The Sullivan kid was out of his mind and Miami is going to win a lot of games in the MAC. CKS called it workmanlike and I think that hits the nail on the head.
by Smoke n Mirrors on Jan 2, 2012 11:01 PM EST reply actions
Taylor and Parker and occasionally Goulbourne in the second half/end of the first half
All but one of the threes he hit in the second half were highly contested. He was just having an unreal night.
Sullivan was doing his best 'Shan Foster on Senior night' impression.
The majority of his 3’s were either highly contested or 3 to 5 feet back from the arc… and they were all swooshes.
Live every week like it's Shark Week.
by Harbinger of Joy on Jan 3, 2012 2:56 PM EST up reply actions
Honestly
We probably lose that game if we had played it last month. Festus makes a difference with his ability to rebound the ball and block shots despite a very poor offensive outing. It was the case of a team being able to dictate the pace of the game and CKS knowing it was going to happen but not wanting to change what we do to force tempo, as the disasterous results of the CSU and to a lesser extent ISU showed us. It worked as well as Miami could have hoped as well, in that they had a very low possession game and had a secondary guy go off on us, scoring 24 points on just 10 shots. The lower possession games also magnify the missed chippies from Taylor and Goulbourne.
The other difference was that we didn’t turn the ball over and played very hard in spite of our below average execution on offense. We were giving great effort defensively and if Sullivan has an average night (hits 4 of 10 threes), we win the game by 17 instead of 7. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a much stronger effort against Auburn even though Auburn is rated a bit higher than Miami is. Auburn will not attempt to slow it down against us but they do have the ability to turn opponents over, though not to the extent of many of the teams we’ve faced to this point.
I am becomming more and more convinced that this team can play good defense on a consistent basis – and am also pretty sure that the offense is going to come around. The key will be getting Festus back to where he was last season. He’s clearly a bit away, so hopefully he will be able to get into the swing of things before too long.
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