The awesome Tyler Tanner finished with 34 points, 5 boards, 7 assists and 5 steals as T Tanner and the Dores outlasted Ole Miss last night, 89-86, in overtime before 7,300 fans at The Sandy and John Black Pavilion in Oxford.
With the victory, a spectacular one on the road against an athletic, pretty talented team, our Dores moved to 23-7 overall and 10-7 in the SEC, and still in contention for a double bye in the SEC Tournament, which commences next Wednesday, 3/11, and runs through Sunday, 3/15, at Bridgestone Arena in Nashville.
Will get more into that in a second.
First, on last night’s game. Tyler Tanner connected on big shot after big shot and helped propel us to a critical SEC road victory as we now gear up for a trip to Knoxville to face the Tennessee Volunteers to close out the season this Saturday at 1 P.M. CT/ 2 ET on ESPN. Should be an epic game with a hopefully favorable outcome.
Duke Miles sank a pair of clutch buckets at the end of regulation, and finished with 16, while another great, graduate senior AK Okereke, from? Cornell University, added 16, 5 boards and 5 assists. Dev McGlockton only finished with 4 points, but pulled down 16 rebounds, eight of them on the offensive glass. Wow. We out-boarded them, 44-40, and outboarded them on the offensive end, 22-12. We also wreaked some havoc on their offense as they turned it over 17 times to our 9.
We shot only 39% from the field, we were 9-of-32 from triple, 28%, and we were 22-of-30 from the line, 73%. It was our work on the glass and the turnovers along with some critical buckets late in the game that won the contest for us. Tyler Nickel finished with 9 points, but sank a critical trifecta late in the game, and pulled down a critical carom right after that.
Dev was brilliant on the boards. He kept two shots alive with consecutive rebounds, the first one he pulled down, and the second he tapped out to T Tanner who then laid the ball in off the glass for a 65-64 lead with 5:11 left. Seemed big at the time. It was our first lead in a long time.
T Tanner was so good last night. Tyler is a phenom. He was driving, dishing, scoring, and played defense like Gary Payton, “The Glove.” Payton played for the Seattle Supersonics back in the day (1990-2003), and was an electric, historically tenacious defensive player.
And T Tanner drained a three that looked like it came from Big Bad Breakfast on the north side of town. What a player.
So, here we are heading into a critical Saturday season finale @ the Vols with a lot at stake. Right now we are tied for fifth with Missouri, A&M and Kentucky at 10-7. Texas is 9-7, and could join us, but they have to play @ Arkansas tonight at 6 CT/7 ET on ESPN2. That’ll be tough for them and a Razorbacks’ win would help us as Texas holds the head to head over us with a victory over us in Austin on January 14th.
Florida has won 10 in a row and is at 15-2 and leading the conference standings. Alabama, which lost on the road last night to a very solid Georgia team, is second at 12-5. Arkansas is third at 11-5, and would tie the Tide for second with a victory, but Alabama holds that head to head tiebreaker over the Hogs by virtue of a victory over them a couple of weeks ago in Tuscaloosa.
Tennessee is in fourth at 11-6. If we defeat the Vols Saturday, we would be tied with them in the standings, and not sure about the tiebreaker in that scenario, yet, because they defeated us in Nashville a week and a half ago. I’ll work on that and, “get back to you,” as my high school U.S. History Teacher/Football Coach would say when we asked him questions like who was the explorer who founded Florida (Ponce de Leon-FYI, I wonder if he ever found that out. He never “got back to us.”). I will though.
Other key games for our purposes this Saturday are: Arkansas @ Missouri (need Missouri to lose, 11 A.M. CT/12 East, ESPN), Florida @Kentucky, (3 P.M. CT/4 ET, E-S-P-N. Need a Florida W), Texas A&M @ LSU (5 P.M. CT/6 ET, SEC Network-we do hold the tiebreaker with the Aggies), and Oklahoma @ Texas (7:30 P.M. CT/8:30 ET. Need a Texas loss tonight or Saturday).
But we need to hold up our end of the bargain first and pull off what would be considered a slight upset in Knoxville as they will be favored in all likelihood. The point spread will be decided closer to game time, tomorrow or Friday, but I’d imagine anywhere from 2 1/2- 5 1/2, Vols.
The Vanderbilt Women’s Basketball team will play Friday at 5 P.M. CT/6 ET on the SEC Network in the quarterfinals of the SEC Women’s Basketball Tournament. We play the winner of Thursday’s No.7 seed Ole Miss and the winner of tonight’s Auburn/A&M matchup (Thursday, 5 P.M. CT/6 ET, SEC Network). We are ranked fifth in the country and can really make a statement for a number one seed in the NCAA Tournament with tremendous success this weekend at Bon Secours Wellness Arena in Greenville, S.C.
Baseball has several injuries right now, and it’s’ a struggle. We’re 7-6 now after losing to Central Arkansas Tuesday, 5-4. We’re playing Troy right now. Troy is always scrappy and usually pretty darn strong in football, basketball and baseball. Those Alabama country boys are terrific athletes and fierce competitors.
The Trojans are 5-6, but have already knocked off No. 8 Georgia, 6-5, in Athens on Wednesday, February 25th, two weeks ago. Georgia is currently ranked 11th nationally by D1Baseball.com. It’s 0-0 going into the bottom of the fourth.
Have a terrific rest of your week. I’ll “get back to you” in the near future. I promise I will.