Vanderbilt (6-15, 1-7 Southeastern Conference), led by Ezra Manjon’s 17 points, snapped a seven-game losing streak, topping Missouri (8-14, 0-9) by a 68-61 score in Nashville, Tenn., on Saturday afternoon.
Vanderbilt, led by Evan Taylor’s 11 boards, out-rebounded the Tigers, 42-31, who turned it over just seven times, but shot 37.3% from the floor.
Freshman guard Isaiah West came off the bench to score 12 points on 4-of-5 shooting on 3-pointers, while Tyrin Lawrence scored 14 and added eight rebounds for Vanderbilt, with Ven Allen Lubin adding 12 and eight.
The Commodores held Sean East II — the Tigers’ leading scorer, who averaged 16.0 points coming in — to just nine.
Noah Carter (20 points), Tamar Bates (17) and Nick Honor (11) led Missouri in scoring. The Tigers have now lost nine straight.
Honor took a pass from Carter and buried a 3 from the right side with 2:51 left, cutting Vanderbilt’s lead to 57-54.
Honor buried two free throws to get the Tigers within a point.
But Vanderbilt’s Taylor hit a turnaround mid-range jumper, Bates traveled on the other end, and Lawrence, with the shot clock running down, hit a jumper to extend the lead to five.
Vanderbilt trailed by 11 on a couple of occasions in the first half, but took a 38-29 lead with 17:51 to play on a Taylor jumper.
The Tigers looked more prepared at the opening tip, though that dissipated late in the half.
Honor caught Vanderbilt napping when he threw a 50-foot pass to Carter for an alley-oop dunk five seconds in. Carter scored nine points in the game’s first 1:50 as Missouri led 9-2.
By the first media time out at 15:08, Missouri led 15-6 with all but a Carter 3 coming in the paint.
Missouri’s East was carried off the floor after he came down awkwardly on a baseline drive with 11:09 left in the first half, allowing Vanderbilt to seize momentum.
The Tigers then hit 1-of-5 from the floor until East returned to hit a jumper at 6:08.
Vanderbilt took its first lead on Lawerence’s lay-up with 4:53 left in the half, part of a 20-9 run that put the Commodores up 32-29 at the break.
–Field Level Media