Vanderbilt gets blown out by Arkansas, 92-71

Shortly before the Vanderbilt Commodores’ game against the Arkansas Razorbacks today, we learned that the team would be without 6’9” Dylan Disu, its second-leading scorer, and 6’10” Quentin Millora-Brown. On a team short on size, Vanderbilt would now be even shorter... but then, the Commodores already fielded the SEC’s worst defense in terms of efficiency, so how much worse could things get?

It turns out: a lot worse. Arkansas jumped out to a 9-0 lead in the game’s first three minutes before Vanderbilt got on the board, and the Razorbacks would build a 45-35 halftime lead on the strength of 52% shooting from the floor. And things didn’t get any better in the second half, either; Arkansas finished the game shooting 56.5 percent from the floor and 8-of-19 from three, numbers made even worse by the fact that the Razorbacks rebounded 11 of their own misses.

On the other side, this Vanderbilt team just isn’t built to have any shot at winning when they shoot 6-of-22 from three and commit 16 turnovers and that’s how you wind up getting drilled by a 92-71 score in your own gym. At least that was better than the last time Arkansas came to Memorial Gym (an 84-48 Vanderbilt loss) but Vanderbilt was never really in this game. D.J. Harvey had 16 points and Max Evans had 14, numbers in line with what fans probably expected to get from them this season (but really hadn’t before today) and it just didn’t matter.

Vanderbilt drops to 4-7 overall and 0-5 in the SEC. This program sucks right now and the worst part after today is that it doesn’t seem to be getting any better, and the fans appear to be deserting it. Baseball season starts on February 19.