Kentucky Defeats Vanderbilt 91-77 in Impressive Showing

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VIDEO: Kentucky coach Mark Pope on UK's victory over Vanderbilt at Rupp Arena Saturday afternoon.

By Hayden Kennedy

Kentucky snapped its three-game losing streak as the Wildcats won a decisive 91-77 match Saturday afternoon at Rupp Arena after losing to the Commodores earlier in the year by 25 points.

This marks Kentucky’s fifth win over an AP Top 25 opponent. UK improved its overall mark to 19-10 (10-6 SEC).

UK sophomore Collin Chandler lit up Rupp, finishing the day with 23 points, shooting an incredible 6 of 8 three-pointers, five of which came in the first half.

In a postgame session with the media, Chandler emphasized on starting the game strong, saying, “It’s super important. They challenged our toughness right from the jump. We were hitting everything, and it was impressive. They stuck with us for a little bit, but then we ran away, and it’s hard to come back down 20 in the first half for any team. I thought we did a good job as a team and just put pressure on them."

Coach Mark Pope praised Chandler's performance. "It’s crazy a guy goes 6 for 8, and nobody is surprised. That’s what he does. He’s got a calmness and a poise, and we talked about this a lot. He’s always been confident, but he’s just getting more and more comfortable. And his ceiling is incredibly high. He’s got so much more in the tank.”

And Kentucky's Otega Oweh took control after halftime, pouring in 17 of his 23 points in the second half. Oweh has now scored 20 points in 12 of 16 SEC games.

After Kentucky's earlier loss at Vanderbilt, Pope was asked about the team’s psyche heading into the game.

“I don’t know if the guys are reading into that," Pope said. “I just know that right now we want to keep growing as a basketball team and getting better, and we think we can. We think we are getting better. We shot the ball extremely well tonight. We handled some issues that we knew we were going to have to handle going into the game. I thought the guys were really, really locked in, and we gave up some things, but it was in the process of taking away some other things. So I think we’re just growing."

Kentucky will travel to College Station on Tuesday to take on the Texas A&M Aggies. The contest will be shown on ESPN2 at 7:00 p.m. ET.

Hayden Kennedy, a recent UK graduate, is a contributing writer from Lexington.

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