The amount of clutch plays by the Vanderbilt basketball team was through the roof good on Saturday in our 68-66 victory over No.21 Florida before 10, 523 fans @ the O’Connell Center in Gainesville. 

Matt Fisher Davis sank clutch shot after clutch shot, finishing with 19. Luke played his typical hard-working, expert shooting game, along with super work on the defensive end. Luke finished with 11 points and 4 boards. Riley LaChance made three huge trifectas in the first half, and ended up with 11 points and 5 assists. Nolan Cressler was exceptional, finishing with 10 points, including some key drives and scores at the basket along with two critical free throws that put us ahead 66-63 with 1:30 remaining and another key drive and score at the rim with :36 left to put us up 68-64. Jeff Roberson played his best game this season. JRobe scored only 7, but was tremendous on the boards, pulling down, 8, four on the offensive end. Payton Willis gave us super minutes off the bench as did Joe Toye. If Djerry Baptiste can keep improving his game and Clevon Brown starts getting some confidence on the floor, we’ll have a solid 9 man group. Not sure what Coach Drew wants to do with the rotation going forward, but I like the makeup he has to work with.

The Gators wouldn’t go away, and after an uncharacteristic turnover by Luke with :11 left, Florida’s KeVaughn Allen attempted a deep 3 from the corner which MFD heavily contested without fouling. The shot was off preserving the victory. Allen was tough for us to stop. He finished with 29.

After the superb effort by our team in a very hostile and difficult place to win, we moved to 9-10 overall on the season and 3-4 in the SEC. Florida dropped to 14-5 and 5-2.

Now we matriculate further into the conference scheduling and have a shot to get back in the race with 3 of the next 4 @ home. It starts with Arkansas tomorrow night @ home, 7:30 CT/8:30 ET on the SEC Network. Then we face Iowa State @home on Saturday at 3 PM CT/4 PM ET on ESPN 2. This game is part of the SEC/Big 12 Challenge. Then we’re @ A&M next Tuesday, 1-31, at 8 PM CT/9 PM ET on the U. And we end that 4 game stretch @ home versus Ole Miss, Saturday, Feb 4th, at 2 PM CT/3 PM ET on duh U.

So a big stretch coming up. First things first. The Razorbacks are 15-4 overall and 4-3 in the conference. Their conference victories are over UT, Missouri, A&M and LSU last Saturday, 99-86, at home. Their losses have come to Florida, 81-72 at home, Kentucky, 97-71, @ Rupp, and State, 84-78, @ home.

It’ll be tough with how athletic they are, but if we defend well, keep them out of the fast-paced, pressing style they like to employ, avoid major turnover numbers, rebound well and shoot it well, we can beat this team. In other words, we need another complete game like Saturday. That’s the game plan going forward. The Razorbacks have four players who are averaging double figures in scoring, led by Daryl Macon,  a 6’3″ guard, who averages 14 ppg. Moses Kingsley is their enforcer, it always seems like they have one or two every year, as Kingsley, 6’10” 230, is averaging 12 points and 8 boards. They’re averaging 38 boards per game, so we’ll have our work cut out for us on the glass. Should be a thriller, and hopefully a huge conference victory, which would move us to 4-4 and 10-10.  Hoping the students and locals will pack the house. This victory Saturday could be a huge momentum builder for this basketball team. Really proud of the heart and determination this team displayed on Saturday. It was an epic performance.

Football Recruiting

As I posted in a blast, we got our 15th commitment yesterday from 6’4″, 245 pound, 86, 3-star defensive end Stone Edwards out of Orange High School in Hillsborough, N.C. Loved Stone’s film. Aggressive player who posted 13 sacks and 21 tackles for loss his senior season in 2016. He’s an excellent addition to our defensive end class along with 86, 3-star Dayo Odeyingbo, 6’4″, 252, and 85, 3-star Jalen Pinkney, 6′ 3 1/2″, 235. Love all 3 guys’ size and film. It looks good at d end going forward with the guys we have coming back, including Dayo’s brother, Dare, and quite a few others, a couple of whom were freshmen this season and redshirted, who look like major sack guys and disrupters next season. We had 12 commits up this weekend and all of them were pumped about the weekend. Coach Mason had them riding go karts among other things. All the guys enjoyed that.

Looking at some remaining guys, who are likely to commit soon, Michael Owusu from California, a 6’6″, 210 pound outside linebacker, is very close to pulling the trigger. D’Angelo Gunter, a highly talented cornerback and wide receiver, is also very close. D’Angelo a California native like Michael and is 6′ 1 1/2 and 190 pounds. Longtime target Chris Pierce, a 6’4″, 212 pound really good looking receiver, is close as well. Chris is from Virginia. Myron Tagovailoa- Amosa, a 6’4″, 270 pound defensive end from Hawaii, is on the verge as is Hawaiian Feleti Afemuo, a 6 1 1/2, 217 pound inside linebacker. Also, Waydale Jones, a 6’4″, 190 pound wide receiver, is very interested in us. Kicker Noah Ruggies, one of the top kickers in the country, is high on us and would be a greyshirt, meaning he would be on the team the first year but not eligible to play and have to pay his own way. But he would be available after that. Players have done that quite a bit around the country.

There could be others. Jesse Johnson of Vandy 247 predicts this class will end up at 21 with a couple of greyshirt possibilities. If we could get most or all of this group, we are in really good shape for the future, with 2018 4 star quarterback Allan Walters already in the fold.

So some super stuff going on with our basketball and football programs.

PGA guys

Luke List and Jon Curran finished tied for 41st in the CareerBuilder Challenge in La Quinta, California, the old Bob Hope Desert Classic. Luke and Jon shot -8 for the tournament. Luke had it going for a while and had a shot at a top 7 or 8 finish, but had some bad holes on the back side and finished with a 73. JC shot 69 and finished strong on the Par 72 PGA West Stadium Course.

But Luke is still 12th in the Fed Ex rankings, which is awesome. Brandt is 111 and Jon is 125. All three are playing at the Farmers Insurance Open @ the historically good Torrey Pines golf Course in San Diego this week. Brandt is the defending champion after shooting a 69 last year on Sunday in amazingly windy and monsoon-like conditions. It was phenomenal what Brandt did. Brandt also won at Torrey in 2012. Hopefully all three will excel and one of them wins. Luke is really close, Brandt is a stud, and JC had a really good tournament over the weekend, so they all three have a shot.

***Note***

Also will be interviewing Corbs today, so expect a column in the next 2 days on VU baseball.