And then there were three.
No. 10 Vanderbilt left the ranks of the undefeateds on Wednesday with an 80-64 loss to unranked Texas. Their record is now 16-1 (3-1 in SEC play).
That leaves three unbeaten teams left among the 365 in Division I men’s college basketball: No. 1 Arizona, No. 8 Nebraska and unranked Miami (Ohio). There were six left at the start of the week, but then Michigan went down in a comeback loss to Wisconsin and Iowa State got steamrolled by Kansas.
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Where did Vanderbilt go wrong? The Commodores got blown off the glass, with Texas holding a 42-24 rebounding advantage getting second chances on 11 of its 25 misses. Combine that with a cold shooting night — 22 of 60 (36.7%) from the field, 9 of 25 (36%) from 3-point range — and Vanderbilt just couldn’t keep up.
It was a close game early, but a quick 9-0 run at the end of the first half gave the Longhorns the advantage and then boat-raced the Commodores over the course of the second half.
Texas center Matas Vokietaitis led all scorers with 22 points on 7-of-9 shooting and Dailyn Swain had a good night with 14 points, 9 rebounds and 7 assists.
It’s a second straight big win for Texas, which beat No. 18 Alabama on Saturday to recover from an 0-2 start in SEC play. It hasn’t been the smoothest year, with a season-opening loss to Duke and other non-conference losses to Arizona State, Virginia and UConn, but Wednesday was another big step forward for the team, especially with a rival matchup against Texas A&M on Saturday.
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