College Basketball Odds - Vanderbilt at Tennessee

Last week, Tennessee brought one SEC surprise in MississippiVanderbilt Commodores.

Vandy is 16-1, with that loss coming Saturday in double overtime to Kentucky.

”We’re obviously disappointed in the outcome of Saturday’s game,” Commodores coach Kevin Stallings said. “We’ve got a lot of progress to make to compete well at Tennessee.”

Indeed they do, as the Vols (14-1) have won 24 consecutive games at home. The Vols will be looking for their 10th straight win overall for the first time since opening the 1997-98 season with 10 victories in a row. No wonder Tennessee is a 10-point betting favorite for tonight’s game on WagerWeb.com.

The Commodores will bring in the top two scorers in the SEC. Shan Foster leads with a 20.6 average, while A.J. Ogilvy, a 6-10, 250-pound center from Australia, averages 19.4 points and 7.1 rebounds.

Foster ranks No. 2 in the SEC in 3-point shooting percentage at 51.1 percent. He has made 71 of 139. He is averaging 4.18 3-pointers made a game, tops in the league. However, he has shot just 27.8 percent from beyond the arc and is averaging only 10.3 points in six career games against the Vols.

Ogilvy, a freshman, is the SEC’s second-most accurate shooter at 63.9 percent."Both are probably the best in the league at their position,' said Vols coach Bruce Pearl, "and are two of the top five players in the league.'

Stallings says even he's been a bit surprised by how quickly the freshman big man has come around.

"I thought he'd be good, but I didn't think he'd be this good, this quickly," Stallings says. "I thought he'd be getting maybe 14-15 points a game. But he's getting 19, and those five points have been very significant."

Senior guard JaJuan Smith leads the Vols in scoring at 14.9 ppg, while Chris Lofton -- who led the SEC last year with more than 20 ppg -- is averaging just 13.5 this season and transfer Tyler Smith 13.3.

Another transfer, J.P. Prince, averages 12.2, Ramar Smith 9.0 and Wayne Chism 8.5 ppg. Lofton is still third in the SEC in 3-pointers made per game at 2.87 per game.

The only offense in the SEC better than Vanderbilt's (86.0 ppg) is Tennessee's, which averages 86.7 points.

While Tennessee lost to Vanderbilt in Nashville last year, the Vols beat the Commodores in Knoxville, 84- 57. This is the teams’ 172nd meeting. The last time both were ranked when facing each other was February 1968.

Bet on NCAA basketball at WagerWeb.com back to earth, and on Thursday night the No. 6 Vols get a chance to do the same to their in-state rivals: the No. 16