Kennedy Says Vandy game proves Talent Gap Becoming Harder to Ignore

By Steve Irvine

October 20, 2026 - NASHVILLE, TN

By every measure the UAB men’s basketball team was overmatched on Monday night in Nashville against preseason No. 24 ranked Vanderbilt. After the 97-65 exhibition game loss to the Commodores UAB head coach Andy Kennedy took a moment to look at the big picture.

That big picture included a look back at the 2023 NIT Tournament quarterfinals when UAB beat the Commodores, 67-59.

“I've been in this building now eight times,” Kennedy said after emerging from the locker room following the game. “I’m 5-3 (in regular season or postseason games) in the building as a head coach. But of those eight times, seven of them I was also coaching a Power Five team. I was coaching Ole Miss and then we came in here when I was at Cincinnati and we were in the Big East. The last time the Blazers came in here, you remember, we played pretty good and won the game. That was right on the cusp of the rev share. It’s just such a vast difference in levels (of money support). You see it. I see it. If you think about our first few teams, we didn’t see that. We had the first year with COVID, and then we had our two teams numerically that were the best (in) our second and third year. Then we were able to get Yax, so we were able to keep hanging in there. All I'm saying is the caliber of player, size, strength, speed is evident. To overcome that, boy, you got to be really, really efficient and we were neither. As a result, you get beat by 30.”

There were many problems on this particular night. Perhaps the two most glaring came in rebounding, where UAB was outrebounded by 18, and turnovers. UAB turned the ball over 18 times with Vanderbilt point guard Tyler Tanner getting six steals.

“They speed you up,” Kennedy said. “And then the size and strength and our guys inability to pass and catch.”

Vanderbilt was by far the more physical team on the boards and scoring from inside and also were the better team in transition. The Commodores outscored UAB by 20 points in the paint and 22 points on the fastbreak.

“There weren't many positives other than a learning opportunity that doesn't go on your record,” Kennedy said.

UAB will get another shot at a learning opportunity against a SEC team next Tuesday when the Blazers travel to play Ole Miss at 7:30 p.m. in the second and final exhibition.

Notes from Monday’s game:

*UAB’s starting lineup consisted of Deuce Jones at point guard, Salim London and Justyn Fernandez in the backcourt and Antallah Sandlin-El and Jeremy Elyzee in the frontcourt. Jones led the way with 18 points but he had just one assist and four turnovers. Fernandez, who was selected as a preseason All-American Conference by some, had a difficult UAB debut with three points on 1-of-9 shooting from the field, including 1-of-5 from 3-point range, and four turnovers in nearly 24 minutes.

*All 12 players dressed out for UAB got into the game. Tim Holliday was the player off the bench for the Blazers. Freshman Korie Corbett finished with five points and got the free throw line three times.

“If I'm grading just on the naked eye, I thought Korie Corbett came in there and gave us some fight,” said Kennedy, who earlier in the interview also praised Deuce Jones and Alek Alston. “Everybody else would be hard to even give a passing grade based on expectation. We had some guys that are just not playing the way that I feel like they're capable of playing.”

*TJ Caldwell had a rough outing. Caldwell, who began his college career at Ole Miss, missed all five of his shots with three of those being blocked by Vanderbilt big men. Caldwell will try to rebound against his former school next Tuesday.

*Kennedy on his expectations going into the Vanderbilt game.

“I came into this with my eyes open,” Kennedy said. “I knew we were gonna be overmatched in a number of spaces. At the end of the day, because I was one of those guys way back when, you need your good players to play good. You need the guys that you brought here to be all-league guys to play like all-league guys. We didn't get a lot of that tonight.”

*Matt Mbole struggled in his first Division I game. The 6-foot-11, 275-pound junior college product had two points and six rebounds while foul trouble limited him to about nine minutes on the floor. Antallah Sandlin-El, a 6-foot-9 junior college product, got the start in the frontcourt with Jeremy Elyzee. Sandlin-El had five points and three rebounds.