Tyrin Lawrence was just waiting in the right corner of the court as the seconds wound down in Memorial with Vanderbilt in a two point deficit. Somehow, point guard Ezra Manjon worked himself around the left baseline and fired a perfect pass across the court to Lawrence, who hauled in and put up a last second three pointer. It was a pure swish as time expired to lift the Dores to the 66-65 upset victory over No.6 Tennessee before 10,483 fans at Memorial Coliseum. It was an electric moment and one of the greatMemorial Magic moments you’ll ever see.

With the victory, the Dores moved to 12-12 on the season and 5-6 in the SEC with 7 games remaining starting with a game @ Florida Saturday at 2:30 PM CT on the SEC Network. Tennessee dropped to 19-5 and 8-3 in the SEC. This was the first Dores victory over the Vols in 12 games. The Dores had lost the previous 11. Also, another interesting stat, was that when we have played Tennessee and they are in the top 10 in the rankings, we are 5-1 against them. That’s pretty remarkable.

Just a spectacular effort by the guys. I really liked the lineup Stack had in for the last 4 minutes of the game with Erza, Tyrin, Jordan Wright, freshman Collin Smith and Liam Robbins. That was an excellent decision to have those five guys in there. The final play was drawn up to perfection. We had been having a tough time of late, but the hard fought victory over Ole Miss and this scintillating victory over Tennessee gives us a lot of momentum heading into the final seven games of the season. I’m not giving up on the NCAA Tournament. With a strong finish and a strong SEC Tourney showing, we’ve got a shot.

The last 15 seconds of the game were nothing short of surreal. Everything had to go our way for us to have a shot at winning. The Vols were up 65-63 and had the ball with 15 second left and we had only committed 2 team fouls. So they would throw it in and we’d foul them and we needed 4 more to get them to the line. With 14 seconds left Erza fouled to get us to 4 fouls. Then the Vols got a breakaway to the basket by Julian Phillips. Astoundingly, Phillips, who had a dunk or a lay-up at worst, thought maybe that Jordan Wright was going to block the shot and he dribbled out and was fouled. That got us to 5. Then another foul. Finally, with :08 left, Tyrin fouled Santiago Vescovi, for our seventh foul. It still looked pretty grim as Vescovi was a 79 percent free throw shooter stepping to the line. He had hit a game tying 3 with 1:37 left to know it up at 63. Then, Oliver Nkamhoua gave Tennessee the 65-63 lead with a mid-ranger in the lane. So, Vescovi was at the line with 8 seconds for a one and one and amazingly missed the front end. Tyrin got the rebound, passed it to Ezra who got it past half court and we called time out. Then the final play transpired with Erza skirting along the baseline and finding Tyrin for the buzzer beater. How tremendous was that.

Tyrin led us with 19 points. The great Liam Robbins added 14 points, 9 boards and 3 blocked shots. Liam, Tyrin, and Jordan Wright, who had 12 points, all in the second half, were not going to let us lose. Collin and Erza did their part as well. It was a terrific team victory and one that will be remembered for a long time and could catapult this hard working team into the NCAA Tournament discussion if we can keep winning. Proud of the guys and pumped for Florida and the rest of the season. James Franklin would always say after we won a game in the post game, “Who are we playing next week?” Corbs does that all the time, too. I know Stack, Clark and Scott Limbaugh think that way as well. So, it’s Florida that’s all that matters right now. Gotta stay laser focused and get ready for the Gators. Will be a challenging matchup, but one we Can win if we play like we did last night and even better.

Men’s Golf captures The Hayt

Our great sophomore Gordon Sargent captured the individual title at -15, and our second ranked (Golfstat) Vanderbilt Men’s Golf Team won the The Hayt tournament with a score of -28 to defeat North Florida, which finished at -12. Florida Gulf Coast finished third at +5, Alabama was 4th at +6, and Coastal Carolina finished 5th at +9.

Another terrific effort by this exciting team. Mathew Riedel finished -5 to tie for 4th. Sophomore Jackson Van Paris, a very promising player who was just as highly touted as the great Gordon coming out of high school, finished -4 and tied for 6th. Reid Davenport finished -3 and tied for 8th. Talented freshman Wells Williams finished at -2, and tied for 11th. And junior Cole Sherwood finished -1 and tied for 14th. So an incredible effort by the team in Ponte Vedra on the Sawgrass Country Club Course. If it sounds familiar, it is. TPC Sawgrass another course at the venue is where the Players Championship, the PGA Tour’s “fifth major” is played with the largest purse in golf at $25 million. So, a nice place to win for the guys.

Our returning individual national champion, Gordon, shot 70, 64,67. What an effort by the Man.

The team now has two weeks before resuming action at the Watersound Classic, Feb. 19-21, a Sunday through a Tuesday, in Panama City Beach, Florida. Awesome stuff from Coach Limbaugh and the guys. Our future looks exceptionally bright.

Baseball featured 10 times on National TV this season

Our Commodores, a consensus top 10 team ranked team with its highest ranking by Baseball America at No.6, though we want to be a lot higher than that at season’s end and playing in Omaha, will square off 10 times on TV this season.

We will play on ESPNU three times, ESPN2 twice, and the SEC Network five times. The slate begins with a March 16th game against defending national champion Ole Miss at the Hawk, a Friday Night game at 6 CT on ESPNU. The series finale will be Sunday, March 18th at 11 AM CT on the SEC Network.

Then we’re back in action April 21-23 @ Tennessee. Game 1, Friday, April 21, will start at 5 PM CT and be televised by the SEC Network. Saturday, April 22nd, we will play them at 11 AM CT on ESPN2. Sunday. April 23rd, we play those guys from the East at 12 PM CT on ESPN2.

We face Kentucky at home for a weekend series April 28-30. and Sunday, April 30, we will face the Wildcats at 2 PM CT on the SEC Network.

We then play @ Louisville, the annual “Battle for the Barrel” contest Tuesday, May 9 at 5 PM CT on ESPNU. Our final nationally televised game will be @ Florida, Friday, May 12th at 4:30 PM CT on the SEC Network in what could be an important close to end of the year series in Gainesville.

The SEC Tournament is Tuesday, May 23rd-Sunday, May 28th. Games will be televised on the SEC Network and either ESPN or ESPN 2 for the championship game. Hope our team is there on Sunday and in Omaha three weeks later.

This team’s got a shot with some stellar arms led by Nick Maldonado, and lefty Carter Holton and Devin Futrell. We’ve got excellent arms. Hoping we can hit for some power this season. Jack Bulger and Parker Noland will be our leaders in the power department. The amazing and spectacular Enrique Bradfield is back after hitting .318 last season and stealing 46 of 46 bases last season. Can’t wait to see what the Man does this season. We’ve got some bats for sure. The defense has a chance to be good. Will get more in depth coming up.

Our first games are in the Collegiate Baseball Showdown in Arlington Texas, at beautiful Globe Life Feld. We’ll face TCU Friday, Feb. 17th at 3 PM CT. We play Oklahoma State Saturday, Feb 17th, at 11 AM CT. And we play Texas Sunday, Feb 19th at 10:30 AM CT. We are No.9, OK State is No. 12, TCU is No.15 and Texas is No. 25 in the preseason D-1 Baseball Rankings. So, quite a challenging start for the team. Should be awesome.

All the games will be streamed on FloSports, a sports app you can get on your phone or your iPad, but don’t worry if you can’t get it. I’ll have full reports each day. Should be stellar with baseball and basketball in action that weekend. Our bball team will play Auburn that Saturday, Feb. 18th @Memorial at 7:30 PM CT on the SEC Network. Amazingly, I’m so caught up in what’s going on now, that that all happens next weekend. Should be an electric time for our basketball and baseball teams.

Football

Football did well with recruiting, we met some needs at running back, wide receiver and on the offensive lines at linebacker and in the secondary. We start spring practice at the end of the month. Like what AJ Swann can do as our quarterback, but they’ll battle it out in the spring and see what happens. Swann can be special. But Ken Seals is back. Ken has been impressive hanging in there without playing at all last season. So, he’ll be in the mix. Walter Taylor and Drew Dickey are a couple of other talents who will get a shot under center this spring. Will have more once the spring has arrived.

I liked our ‘23 class. It may not have been as highly ranked, but we got some super players. We pulled in three excellent wide receivers. Excited to see what Will Sheppard, Quincy Skinner, Jayden McGowan and Gamirion Carter can do on the perimeter for us in 2023. Patrick Smith, Chase Gillespie and the three talented freshmen will have to carry the load at running back. There is talent, so just need to develop. Both Smith and Gillespie shows signs of being excellent running backs. Ray Davis transferred to Kentucky and quarterback Mike Wright transferred to Mississippi State. Our O line is big, strong and physical, we have some experience returning, and tight end needs to step up. But we’ve got players at those positions who can get the job done well. Defense could be even better next season. Expecting that to be the case.

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Will check back in again soon. Thanks a lot for reading.