Auburn Tigers vs Vanderbilt Commodores Match Player Stats On Feb 09, 2021

Auburn's Sharife Cooper started slowly but scored 18 in the second half, as the visiting Tigers knocked off Vanderbilt, 73-67, at Memorial Gymnasium in Nashville, Tenn., on Tuesday evening.

Jamal Johnson scored 19 for the Tigers, with Devan Cambridge scoring 11 and Allen Flanigan, 10.

Dylan Disu (18 points, 10 rebounds) had his fourth double-double this season, while Jordan Wright added 14 points for Vanderbilt (5-10, 1-8 SEC).

Auburn shot 84 percent from the foul line on 25 shots, with Vanderbilt going just 11-of-22 (50 percent).

For most of the night, the game didn't materialize as expected.

Auburn (11-10, 5-7), led by Cooper (20.3 ppg), had scored at least 82 points in its previous five games and shot 35.6 percent from the field.

Cooper, the Tigers' sensational point guard, scored 19 and dished out seven assists while Scotty Pippen Jr. -- his Vandy counterpart -- had 12 points and one assist while fouling out in 24 minutes.

Cooper started slowly but picked things up in the second half. He didn't hit his first field goal until he drained a 3-pointer 47 seconds into the second half.

The freshman also picked up his third foul 32 seconds later, but stayed in the game, then hit Cambridge and Flanigan with alley-oops for back-to-back dunks to knot the score at 31.

Cooper didn't hit another shot from the field until 7:01 remained as he drove and hit a short jumper over Vandy's Clevon Brown from the right baseline. That gave Auburn its biggest lead (51-45) of the game to that point.

Forty seconds later, Cooper's two free throws extended that lead a point.

Cooper drove to the hole with 5:00 to play, hitting a lay-up, drawing a fifth foul on Pippen and then nailing the ensuing free throw to make Auburn's lead 58-51.

Vandy never got closer than five again, and Cooper drained two foul shots with 26 seconds left to put Auburn up seven.

It was an awful offensive first half.

Vanderbilt led 25-23, shooting 33.3 percent from the field to Auburn's 21.9. Auburn turned it over 10 times, and the Commodores, eight.

The Commodores uncharacteristically blocked seven shots in the first half, with Brown swatting five.

Johnson, who averaged 8.3 points coming in, scored 13 before the break while shooting 3 of 7 from the field.

But his teammates were just 4 of 25 (16 percent) in the period. That included Cooper, who missed all four of his shots and had just one point.

Auburn made one of its first 10 from the floor as Vanderbilt scored the game's first eight points.

It took the Tigers eight tries to hit a 3, but Chris Moore and Johnson knocked down back-to-back tries in cutting the lead to 12-10 with 11:22 left in the half.

Then it was Vandy's turn to go cold, going 6:03 without a field goal while watching Auburn take its first lead in the midst of that when Johnson canned another with 9:05 left before the break.

--Field Level Media