Upset of the Night. Western Kentucky 76, #24 Vanderbilt 69. Vandy dropped its second game in four days after becoming ranked this week, this time losing at the Sommet Center in Nashville (site of this year’s SEC Tournament) to Western Kentucky for the first time since World War II.  Granted, the two teams have only played ten times in the last sixty-four years, but ten in a row is still ten in a row.  WKU got 27/3 from their star AJ Slaughter and outrebounded the Commodores by five despite giving up considerable size on the interior.  Perhaps this game would have gone differently at Memorial Gymnasium across town, as the ‘Dores only shot 5-19 from three, and we know how they can heat up in their old building.  This is a very good win for the Hilltoppers, as Ken McDonald’s team lost their previous two games against SEC competition this year (LSU and South Carolina), and will need a couple of solid nonconference wins to ensure an at-large bid come March if they don’t win the Sun Belt Conference.

WKU Had a Lot to Celebrate Tonight (Joe Imel/BG Daily News)

Other Games of National Interest.

• #9 Tennessee 75, Middle Tennessee State 54. UT got a breakout game from JP Prince (17 pts) off the bench that helped to make up for a poor offensive game from Scotty Hopson, who had only one point in 24 minutes of action.  Bruce Pearl is getting five or more points per game from eight of his players so far this year.
• Dayton 58, Old Dominion 50. Dayton’s Chris Wright (16/12) turned it on tonight when needed, scoring ten straight points in the second half  to ensure the Flyers’ 24th straight victory at home, good for the third longest streak in the nation.
• Iowa State 81, Iowa 71. Iowa State got a huge game from its star Craig Brackins (28/8/4 blks) to win its fourth straight home game against its intrastate rival Iowa Hawkeyes.  Todd Lickliter was not back coaching in this game, but is expected to be back next week for the Hawkeyes, but he has some serious issues to deal with on this team.
• USC 59, Idaho State 53. Kevin O’Neill once again basically played six players, but he got a school-record thirteen blocks from this team in the hard-fought win.

rtmsf (3998 Posts)

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 12th, 2009 at 1:47 am by rtmsf and is filed under after the buzzer. Tagged: aj slaughter, ken mcdonald, sun belt, vanderbilt, western kentucky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.