Vanderbilt Grinds Out Victory Over UMass, 24-7

After a sloppy first half and an impassioned halftime speech from Senior OL Wesley Johnson, the Commodores buckled down for a much stronger third and fourth quarters featuring two touchdowns and a defensive shutout en route to a 24-7 victory over the Massachusetts Minutemen.

The Commodores did notch their first first quarter touchdown of the season (not a typo) on a 6-play, 81-yard drive capped with a 42-yard bomb from QB Austyn Carta-Samuels to WR Jonathan Krause. [UPDATE: This was also Krause's first career receiving touchdown for Vanderbilt] UMass rallied back with a touchdown of their own just inside the start of the second quarter. Carey Spear answered with a 32-yard field goal to put the Commodores up 10-7 before UMass K Blake Lucas missed a 45-yard FG to end the half.

Jordan Matthews would provide the highlight of the afternoon with his 11-yard touchdown run off a too-pressured-for-comfort-screenpass from Carta-Samuels that saw the star WR juke one defender into a missed tackle and hurdle another into the end zone for the score. Jerron Seymour added an insurance touchdown on a one yard touchdown run that ended the scoring on the afternoon.

All in all, it was a victory they were supposed to get and they did what they had to do to get it. There probably weren't a lot of style points to go around (JMatt's touchdown aside), but those don't count anyway.

Don't ever apologize for a win!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lesson learned from Nate Burleson. I'm proud of you Vandy Boyz!!! #anchordown #vandynation

— Jovan Haye (@jovan_haye) September 21, 2013