NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Mikayla Blakes scored 30 points and No. 5 Vanderbilt staged a third-quarter comeback to beat Florida 82-66 on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The Commodores scored a season-low 10 points in the first quarter and went into halftime down 35-25 after shooting just 32% from the floor. Blakes had just six points. <\/p>\n
It was the third straight game Vanderbilt (21-2, 7-2 Southeastern Conference) fell behind early and struggled to recover, as it was outscored 33-16 by South Carolina and 23-15 by Mississippi in the first 10 minutes. <\/p>\n
However, unlike the two former, the Commodores made a massive third-quarter push. <\/p>\n
Blakes, the SEC’s leading scorer, immediately ignited the Commodores\u2019 comeback in the third quarter scoring 14 points and shooting 7 of 7 from the free-throw line. <\/p>\n
In the final 1:48 of the frame, Blakes scored eight of Vanderbilt’s final 11 points. She also added seven assists to her final total. <\/p>\n
The Commodores scored 32 points in the third quarter, highlighted by a halfcourt buzzer beater from Aubrey Galvan. She finished with nine points after going scoreless in the first half.<\/p>\n
Sacha Washington missed just one shot for the Commodores, scoring 14 points. Similar to Blake, she cleaned up at the line, shooting 4 of 6. <\/p>\n
The SEC’s second-leading scorer, Florida’s Liv McGill, scored 21 points. Me\u2019Arah O’Neal had 22 points as the pair was instrumental in putting Vanderbilt behind early in the game. <\/p>\n
Florida (13-11, 1-8) has now lost three straight and eight of its last nine. <\/p>\n
Things don’t get easier for the Commodores, as they face seven straight ranked opponents from Thursday through the start of the SEC Tournament. Four of those games are at home. <\/p>\n
Florida: Hosts Auburn on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Vanderbilt: At No. 18 Kentucky on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here<\/a> and here<\/a> (AP mobile app). AP women\u2019s college basketball: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/ap-top-25-womens-college-basketball-poll<\/a> and https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/womens-college-basketball<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Mikayla Blakes scored 30 points and No. 5 Vanderbilt staged a third-quarter comeback to beat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[68167,1111,3108,8294,111,28,30,29,110,22051],"class_list":{"0":"post-140148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-florida","8":"tag-68167","9":"tag-article","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-college-basketball","12":"tag-college-sports","13":"tag-florida","14":"tag-florida-headlines","15":"tag-florida-news","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-womens-college-basketball"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}