Kentucky makes it four wins in a row with 69-53 victory over Vanderbilt

Make that four in a row for the ‘Cats.

On Tuesday night in Nashville, Kentucky men’s basketball (14-6; 5-3 SEC) played one of its best games of the entire season, resulting in a 69-53 blowout win over the Vanderbilt Commodores (10-10; 3-4 SEC). Oscar Tshiebwe (15 points, 13 rebounds) and Jacob Toppin (12 points, 10 rebounds) both finished with double-doubles while Antonio Reeves led the Wildcats in scoring once again with 16 points on 7-14 shooting. Sahvir Wheeler added four points and five assists in 22 minutes played, his most on-court action in two weeks.

After trailing 20-19 with seven minutes left in the first half, Kentucky outscored Vanderbilt 50-33 the rest of the way.

Unlike most games for Kentucky this season, it was a good start out of the gate for the ‘Cats. Toppin got the momentum rolling with a mid-range jumper as the offense easily heated up. Seven quick points from Reeves put UK ahead 15-13 almost midway through the first half, but both sides would go into a bit of a drought over the next few minutes.

Kentucky went over four minutes before a Toppin dunk broke the dry spell to make it 19-17 in favor of the road team. From there, the ‘Cats were constantly on the verge of blowing the game wide open. An excellent 7-0 finish to the first half was capped by a nifty pass from Reeves to Toppin right before the buzzer. With John Calipari skipping into the locker room, his squad led 36-27 despite a so-so defensive performance.

Out of the break, UK looked to be playing its best basketball of the season. Back-to-back triples from Cason Wallace grew the Wildcats’ advantage even more. Toppin leaked out for a fastbreak score that gave Kentucky a 48-30 lead and forced Vanderbilt into a timeout just four minutes into the half.

But the Commodores refused to go away, mainly due to the play of Malik Dia, who canned two tough shots from deep in short order that keep his team alive. Dia came into the night with just seven made three-pointers on the season, but the backup freshman big went 4-5 on Tuesday. His effort wasn’t nearly enough, though. At the under-eight-minute media timeout, UK held a commanding 65-47 lead.

Kentucky would balloon that lead to as many as 20 before settling on the 16-point victory. The ‘Cats shot 56 percent overall from the floor, the team’s best in SEC play so far this season. Vanderbilt turned the ball over just four times and only committed five fouls all night long, but shot a poor 33 percent from the field. Five Kentucky players finished in double-figure scoring.