Texas Longhorns Hand No. 10 Vanderbilt its First Loss in Upset Win

The Texas Longhorns men's basketball is finding its stride during the start of SEC play, and building a NCAA Tournament resume in the process.

Matas Vokietaitis scored a game-high 22 points and Tramon Mark added 21 points of his own as Texas gave No. 10 Vanderbilt its first loss of the season in convincing fashion, beating the Commodores 80-64 at the Moody Center on Wednesday night.

With the victory, the Longhorns secure back-to-back Top-15 wins in SEC play.

Texas Longhorns Coming Alive

Texas Longhorns guard Jordan Pope makes a three point basket during the first half against the Vanderbilt Commodores at Moody Center. | Dustin Safranek-Imagn Images

After an 0-2 start in SEC play, the Longhorns now have two of the biggest wins in the entire conference up to this point in the season.

Texas dominated the glass, out-rebounding Vanderbilt 42-24. The Longhorns also had a 30-14 edge on points in the paint.

Dailyn Swain flirted with a triple-double for Texas, finishing with 14 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. Jordan Pope added 12 points for the Longhorns.

Both teams started out hot on offense, as Pope and Mark both hit early triples for Texas while Nickel and Tanner countered with a pair of their own to tie the game at 10-10.

Texas hit its first four shots of the game but that hardly fazed the No. 10 team in the country.

Miles started to catch fire, as his third triple of the first half at the seven-minute mark gave Vandy a 28-27 lead before Vokietaitis gave it right back to Texas on a pretty step-through in the paint.

The Longhorns then started to grab momentum toward the end of the half thanks to a 7-0 run before the under-4 timeout. Swain banked in a tough runner off the glass before finishing a contested layup in transition.

He followed this up with a swing pass to the corner to Camden Heide, who drilled the triple to give Texas a 38-30 lead with 2:58 left in the first half.

After a fastbreak dunk from Vokietaitis gave Texas a 40-30 lead, the Longhorns looked like they would be heading into halftime with a double-digit lead, but Vanderbilt used a quick 5-0 run highlighted by a corner triple from Nickel.

The Longhorns led 42-37 at halftime, marking the first time all season that Vanderbilt trailed at the break.

Texas came out of halftime with a backdoor dunk from Swain and a corner 3 from Mark to build a 48-42 lead.

Mark kept things rolling with two isolation triples from the top of the key at the end of the shot clock to give the Longhorns a

Vanderbilt cut the lead down to as few as four in the second half, but it wasn't enough. The Longhorns strung together multiple key stops and started to pull away.

Texas turned things into a dunk fest late, and rolled to a win.