Both teams sitting on the 9 seed for the big dance and needing SEC wins wherever they can get them, both teams come in desperate for a win. Oklahoma had dropped 5 of their last 7 since entering their first SEC conference stretch undefeated, and if they wanted to continue to see their name in bracket predictions needed to knock off Mark Byington and the red hot Commodores. Vanderbilt entered the game after spending the last 2 Saturdays dancing and celebrating all over Ingram Court while accumulating $750,000 in fines. The Commodores were thought to be without Jaylen Carey due to an illness in this game. After a week of rest and practice, the Dores travel to Norman for their first showdown against the Sooners as a conference game. An about half full gym was on hand for the Saturday afternoon tilt.

Jason Edwards started off the scoring for the Dores after Chris Manon got the rebound from the McGlockton failed 3 point attempt. After going 1/2 from the charity strike after a Glock foul, he hustled down to get an easy feed down the lane for the layup. The first three possessions for the Sooners resulted in Vanderbilt fouls, luckily all on different players.

Vanderbilt started absolutely red hot on offense, scoring 13 points in the first 3 minutes of play on 5/7 shooting, including 3/4 start from 3. AJ Hoggard picked up his 2nd foul outside the 3 point line less than 5 minutes into the game, bringing in Grant Huffman and MJ Collins (side note rocking a new look afro underneath the headband for the first time. Vanderbilt went to the first media timeout with a 15-8 lead with 15:18 left in the 1st half.

Devin McGlockton seemed to get what he wanted early inside, out battling for position over Wague. After a very sloppy couple minutes, Byington put a rather confusing lineup in the game going with Tanner, Nickel, Huffman, Carey, and JQ Roberts. After a failed reverse layup, Tyler Nickel ended up down under the basket grabbing his ankle, causing a delay while they looked at him. It looked like his ankle was stepped on and he was looked at on the bench.

Mcglockton gets another big bucket inside, ending a 4 minute FG drought and extending the lead to 7. After a Chris Manon steal and fast break dunk, Oklahoma has to use the momentum timeout to try and keep the deficit at 9. Jason Edwards stays hot from 3, making it a 9-0 run by the Dores and a 12 point advantage. Staring at foul trouble later on but lacking a real choice today, Byington had to keep Manon and Hoggard in the game with 9 min left in the first half with 2 fouls a piece.

Tyler Nickel returned to the game only 3 game minutes after his injury, shoutout Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Hoggard continues to hit contested wing 3’s every game and extended the Vandy lead to 31-19 with 7 to go in the half. McGlockton got to his 14th point of the half hitting his 2nd three-pointer of the half to end a mini-run by the Sooners before Dayton Forsythe hit the teams 3rd three.

Forsythe continued to be the spark plug the Sooners needed after scoring to cut the lead to 7 before forcing a JQ Roberts turnover. Luke Northweather hit a top of the key wide open 3 to cut the lead to 2 with 20 seconds left in the half, but Jason Edwards followed up with a circus almost behind the backboard shot to give Vanderbilt a 40-36 lead going into the break.

The Sooners bench players made the difference in the first half, scoring 11 of the 36 Sooner points. Watching the Dores let a double digit lead and complete momentum disappear, Vandy fans knew a big 2nd half was in order.

Right out of the locker room the two teams traded buckets at the rim, with Hoggard and Sam Godwin scoring on the pick and rolls. The Sooners take their first lead of the game with 18 minutes to go after a pair of 3’s from Duke Miles and Bryson Goodine.

Vanderbilt started half 2nd half with 4 turnovers on the first 6 possessions, including Tyler Tanner's first live ball turnover of the season. Oklahoma brought the lead up to 10 after back to back threes from the Sooners, this time from Bryson Goodine and Jalon Moore. Byington had to use a timeout to try and figure something out, because both sides of the ball were falling apart quickly.

The Sooners' run got to 23-0 after AJ Hoggard's opening bucket of the half. The Vanderbilt offense lacked ball movement and turned into iso ball, which everyone reading this knows never ends well for this team. Vanderbilt started 1/9 from the field to start the 2nd half before we finally see Jaylen Carey and he gets his first basket. Staring at a 15 point deficit now with 12 minutes to go in the game, the Dores had gone from controlling this game to being dominated in a 20 minute stretch, probably the worst of the Byington era so far. The Dores were able to cut the lead down to 10 with 11 minutes to go after Tyler Tanner hit a big mid range jumper.

The story of the 2nd half will be the poor shooting performance by the Commodores, it seemed every time they needed a big shot it couldn’t fall, and the Sooners couldn’t seem to miss when needed. The lead would keep jumping between 10-15 but Vandy couldn’t get it low enough to make a difference in the end. Shots continued to spin out for the Dores, and Oklahoma took every advantage they could, building the lead to 32.

In the end Vanderbilt drops this game 97-67 and lets Oklahoma get walk-on’s into a game where Vandy had a double digit lead and all the momentum.

Tuesday night Vanderbilt travels to Gainesville, Florida to face off against the now #5 Gators. Today’s loss shouldn’t hurt them too badly in the NCAA committee's eyes, being a quad 1 game on the road. The Commodores will have to play a lot closer to how they played in the first half against the Sooners than they did in the 2nd. The improvement I would like to see is when the offense isn’t clicking, just reverting to driving down and praying to get fouled. In almost every SEC game so far they have called the game very loosely and let the boys play, so stop trying to draw a foul they aren’t calling. Overall today was embarrassing and hurt to watch, but in a conference this strong, games like this happen you just don’t like to see it happen when a third of the way through it was all Vandy. The committee isn’t just going to throw out the Vandy file because of today’s game, I promise. I do fear however this ends being ranked, which is probably for the best right now.