Anchor Drop, September 17, 2018: Eight Straight

Good morning.

Vanderbilt soccer went down to Gainesville on Sunday for its SEC opener, and came away with a 2-1 win over homestanding Florida, the Commodores’ first win over the Gators since 1997. Junior forward Kaylann Boyd opened the scoring with this 30-yard strike in the 12th minute:

After Florida scored the equalizer in the 78th minute, sophomore midfielder Paola Ellis scored the winner in the 88th minute, her first goal of the season:

Vanderbilt had just three shots on goal for the game, but two of them found the net. That makes eight straight victories for the Commodores, who are now 8-1 on the season and 1-0 in SEC play.

Men’s tennis completed the Commodore Scramble on Sunday, with Maxwell Freeman and Marcus Ferreira taking home individual championships in the event.

On the football side, new polls are out, and Vanderbilt got two votes in the Coaches’ Poll — down from three last week in spite of a near-miss at Notre Dame on Saturday. The Commodores are now 56th in Sagarin and dropped 12 spots to 35th in S&P+, in spite of playing a game in which they had a 56.5% win expectancy against Notre Dame. Opponent adjustments appear to be the culprit; Nevada was fortunate to beat a rather bad Oregon State team at home (the Wolf Pack got outgained by nearly 200 yards but won 37-35), while Georgia made MTSU look really bad (granted, Georgia’s probably going to do that to a lot of people.)

Still, Vanderbilt opens as a 3-point underdog against South Carolina this week.

Off the West End

The Titans beat the Texans 20-17 with Blaine Gabbert as their starting QB, which is something. Zach Cunningham did have nine tackles in his return to Nashville.