The first half of “Feast Week” was fixated on the Players Era men’s championship in Las Vegas, but now another tournament will enjoy a high-powered matchup of unbeaten teams in its title game.
No. 24 Vanderbilt and Saint Mary’s will meet with the Battle 4 Atlantis title on the line on Friday afternoon in Paradise Island, Bahamas.
For starters, it’s a rematch of an NCAA Tournament first-round game from last March, when No. 7 seed Saint Mary’s defeated No. 10 Vanderbilt 59-56 in East Region play.
The Commodores (7-0) aren’t likely to finish a game scoring in the 50s anytime soon. They entered Thursday averaging 99.7 points per game, and they didn’t hurt that pace too much in an 89-74 victory over VCU in the semifinals.
Duke Miles led Vanderbilt with 20 points, and Tyler Tanner and Tyler Nickel each added 16. That trio was responsible for eight of the Commodores’ 11 3-pointers, made at a 50% clip.
Miles — a journeyman with previous stops at Troy, High Point and Oklahoma — is having a tournament to remember. In the first-round game Wednesday, an 83-78 win over Western Kentucky, Miles put the Commodores on his back with a season-high 28 points that included 12-of-12 free-throw shooting.
Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington was complimentary of Miles after that performance.
“I like dynamic guards that can score and make plays for others,” Byington told reporters Wednesday. “He’s an extremely important piece. I think he was the last (transfer) that we got and we knew how important he was for the team. He’s going to even get more and more comfortable with us, with the team, along the way.”
Saint Mary’s (8-0) coud have the antidote for Vanderbilt’s stellar offense. The Gaels were ranked in the top five nationally in scoring defense (58.9 points per game) before Thursday’s semifinal against Virginia Tech, and their 77-66 win fit in with their expectations.
What made this game stand out was that it represented the Gaels’ first chance to play a power-conference foe this season. They held Virginia Tech to 30.9% shooting from the field and 23.3% from 3-point range. One Hokies starter, Jailen Bedford, went 0-for-10 from the floor.
Will the Gaels have the offense to keep up with the Commodores? The Gaels shot 51.9% from the field against Virginia Tech, their fifth time in eight games shooting at least 50%. Paulius Murauskas (19 points, seven rebounds) led four scorers in double figures as Saint Mary’s racked up 38 paint points.
“The good was we were good inside,” coach Randy Bennett said. “I thought we were pretty good on shot selection … and shot it decent from three, which we didn’t the first night. Our area of concern we have to get better at, and this has been how we’ve been, is we’ve got to quit turning the ball over.”
The Gaels had 15 turnovers.
Murauskas is the only Saint Mary’s starter from last year’s NCAA game still with the team; he had just four points on 1-for-9 shooting against Vanderbilt last March. Now Murauskas is the Gaels’ leading scorer at 18.6 points per game, behind Mikey Lewis’ 17.2.
Nickel scored nine points and Devin McGlockton had seven for the Commodores that day. Nickel (13.9 ppg) and McGlockton (11.4) are two of Vanderbilt’s six double-figure scorers this season, topped by Miles and his 17.9 clip.
