NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — For whatever Vanderbilt tried Saturday,
Lipscomb had no answer.
Freshman center Andrew Ogilvy scored a career-high 26 points and senior guard Shan Foster added 21 to lead the No. 23 Commodores to a 90-67 victory over their cross-town rivals.
Ogilvy scored 18 points in the first half to stake Vanderbilt to an early 15-point lead. When Lipscomb countered by playing a zone defense for part of the second half, Foster took over from the perimeter, making five 3-pointers.
“I’d rather have a root canal than go through this,” Lipscomb coach Scott Sanderson said. “Against most teams, you only have to guard parts of the floor. Against them, you’ve got to guard the whole floor.”
Ogilvy’s inside scoring and Foster’s perimeter shooting have keyed Vanderbilt’s 9-0 start, its best in four years.
“How would I defend Vanderbilt?” Foster said. “Stay at home.”
Ogilvy scored six points during an early 14-0 run that put the Commodores ahead 18-4. Vanderbilt led by no fewer than eight points the rest of the game.
Ard led Lipscomb with 18 points and Thomas Pfaff scored 15.
“I felt like I had the ability to have my way in there,” Ogilvy said.
Vanderbilt led 50-35 with 15:58 remaining on a 3-pointer by Alex Gordon before Lipscomb (4-6) rallied. A jumper by Eddie Ard with 12:27 remaining capped an 8-2 run and trimmed Vanderbilt’s lead to 54-46.
The Bisons then retreated into a zone, hoping to contain Ogilvy, and Foster went to work.
He swished three consecutive 3-pointers and two free throws, and Gordon added two treys, to keep the Commodores ahead 71-53 with 7:09 left.
“My eyes went extremely wide when they went zone,” Foster said. “When you have a guy like Andrew (Ogilvy) playing like a monster inside, it opens it up for me.”
Foster scored 17 points in the second half and finished with 21.
“I was happy with the fact that we went to the guys we needed to go to in situations like that and pushed it back out,” Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said.
Gordon added 12 points for the Commodores.
Vanderbilt’s largest lead of the first half came at 31-16 with 3:28 remaining on a free throw by Ogilvy.
Lipscomb shot only 37.5 percent from the field.
