Vanderbilt Basketball Goes on Insane Scoring Run on Opening Night – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE — Vanderbilt men’s basketball is having quite the day on its opening night of the college basketball season.
The Commodores are up 64-21 on Bellarmine at the under-14 minute mark of the second half. But the story of the game so far is what happened leading up to the 43-point lead early in the second half.
Vanderbilt went on a 50-7 run to open up a massive lead that is going to end up in a Commodore win. With the game tied at 14-14, it looked like Vanderbilt was just getting some first game jitters out in the first few minutes. Whether that was the case or not, Vanderbilt locked in on offense and defense.
It started with a 12-0 run to give Vanderbilt its first substantial lead of the game. The Commodores hit a few shots and got to the line before Bellarmine ultimately hit a shot to make it 26-16. After that, though, Vanderbilt finished the first half on a 18-1 run.
That run extended into the first few minutes of the first half, where the Commodores continued to dominate.
With the emphatic win Vanderbilt is going to have Monday night, it certainly meets the standard the program has for itself this season. The Commodores may have lost keys pieces from last season to the NBA, but they were busy in the transfer portal by addressing important needs in the paint and on defense.
The Commodores added guys like Bangot Dak, Berke Buyuktuncel, Sebastian Williams-Adams, Ace Glass and T.O. Barrett through the transfer portal and all five of them are expected to have meaningful roles on the roster this season.
The Commodores have high aspirations this season after making it to the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament a season ago. This season, Vanderbilt has hopes of makling it to the second weekend and even the final weekend of the big dance.
Vanderbilt's defense was astounding against Bellarmine. That is not a one-off performance, but rather something head coach Mark Byington hopes is a staple of his team this season.
“I hope we get there and that’s what we’ve told our guys. We’ve won a certain way since I’ve been here but that doesn’t mean we have to win the exact same way this year. So we might be more of a defensive team this year than offensively, which has been opposite,” Byington said. “And we’re built that way, especially our back row guys. Our backside of it, we got some physicality, some guys that can fix mistakes back there.”
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Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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