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Good morning.
The Vanderbilt Commodores return to action tonight, hosting the Kentucky Wildcats at 8:00 PM CT on ESPN. Vanderbilt, as you’ll recall, is on a seven-game losing streak and lost 86-55 to Oklahoma last time out.
During that losing streak, the Commodores have seemed to alternate between “they’re almost there” (three-point loss to South Carolina, overtime loss to Tennessee) and “they’re not even close” (19-point loss to Georgia, 16-point loss to Mississippi State, whatever the hell that was at Oklahoma.) The previous game at Kentucky — a 56-47 loss in which Vanderbilt led at halftime and was in the game for most of it — definitely fell into the former category.
Kentucky hasn’t lost since a 77-75 loss to Alabama to open the SEC slate, and the Wildcats are now ranked 7th in the AP poll and 10th in KenPom. So of course Vanderbilt’s going to win this game, right? Right.
(Seriously, though, this streak’s probably reaching eight tonight.)
Vanderbilt News
The women’s basketball team is getting better! We swear! The Commodores traveled to South Carolina last night and actually led 40-38 at halftime, before a bad third quarter sent them to an 80-69 loss. Still, that was a road game against a Top 25 team.
The bad news, of course, is that they’re now 6-14 on the season and 1-6 in SEC play.
The Daily Orange (the Syracuse student newspaper) writes about Matthew Moyer’s transition to Vanderbilt.
Meanwhile, here’s the Hustler on Vanderbilt and mental toughness ahead of the Kentucky game.
Tweet of the Day
I can kind of understand why some #Preds fans want a Winter Classic at Neyland Stadium. Teams wearing gold have had an easy time winning there in recent years...
— Cutler Klein (@CutlerKlein) January 29, 2019
Off the West End
Well one Drew brother loses at Oklahoma by 31, and then the other one wins there by 30.
Anthony Davis wants out of New Orleans. Having been to New Orleans... ummmm, why would you want out of New Orleans?
Penny Hardaway said more things, which for some reason made the college basketball home page at ESPN.
Speaking of ESPN, they’re not bringing back Baseball Tonight, which is bad from the perspective of “things I liked as a kid,” but MLB’s Quick Pitch does the same thing, only way better than Baseball Tonight ever did. So... who cares? ESPN continues its deep dive into being less of a sports channel and more of a niche channel (NBA and college sports.)