Memphis at Vanderbilt
Tuesday, November 10, 2026
7:15 PM ET, Memorial Gymnasium
No. 22 Vanderbilt is a 16.5-point favorite over Memphis with a total of 160.5 at most books. My play is Memphis +16.5.
Two games into the season, Penny Hardaway’s team has already beaten a top-20 opponent and a preseason Atlantic 10 favorite. Its reward? A number that treats it like a buy-game guest.
The Tigers have been living on the edge, and winning there
Memphis opened with an 80-76 win over No. 18 Iowa State at the Sanford Pentagon in Sioux Falls, the highest-ranked opponent the program has ever beaten on opening day. Five days later it trailed VCU by 10 early in the second half at FedExForum, then clawed back for an 89-88 win when Jayden Reid drew a foul with five seconds left and buried both free throws.
Reid is the engine. The senior transfer, who spent two seasons at South Florida and last year at Northwestern, put up 26 against Iowa State and a career-high 32 against VCU, going 11-of-21 with seven assists and three steals. Rihards Vavers is the sidekick nobody is guarding closely enough yet: 7-of-12 from deep through two games.
Memphis is doing this shorthanded, too. Center Nemanja Popovic is serving a six-game NCAA withholding period for past international competition, and he has only sat out two of them.
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Vandy is better. Just not 16.5 better.
Let me be clear: Vanderbilt is the superior team, and Memorial Gym is a tough room. Mark Byington’s group has flattened Bellarmine 93-47 and Wake Forest 74-51, and against the Demon Deacons it owned the glass 48-33. Tyler Tanner is averaging 18.5 points and grabbed a career-high 10 boards against Wake.
The question is the size of the gap. Barttorvik, which adjusts every possession for opponent and still leans on preseason priors this early, has Vandy 20th nationally with the 11th-best defense. Memphis sits 102nd, held back by a defense rated 161st. Run those ratings through a tempo-adjusted projection with home court and you land around an 85-73 Commodores win. That’s a 12- or 13-point game, not 17.
The market went the other way. Some shops are hanging 15.5, but most are at 16.5, and the total has crept up from 158.5 to 160.5. A fast game with two teams that like to shoot helps the dog here. More possessions give Reid more chances to keep the backdoor open late.
What could sink the Tigers
That 161st-rated defense is no joke. VCU drilled 13 of 24 threes on Memphis, and if Vandy shoots like that, this gets ugly fast. Road life was cruel to the Tigers last season, when they went 2-11 against the spread away from home. And Vanderbilt’s size on the boards could turn Memphis’ thin frontcourt, still missing Popovic, into a parade of second chances. Two games is a tiny sample on both sides, so the ratings are doing a lot of the talking.
Still, I’ll take a battle-tested team with a closer at point guard getting 16.5. Even if Memphis loses, I expect it to hang around.
Projected score: Vanderbilt 85, Memphis 73
The Pick: Memphis +16.5 (-108)
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