Vandy & Harvard: March Madness Battle Of The Brains

You can call this the battle of the nerds, the battle of the 4.0s (or maybe more accurately the 4.25s), or whatever – but there’s no doubt that today’s Vanderbilt / Harvard game has the chance to be a great one.

Vanderbilt is coming off their victory over top-ranked Kentucky in the SEC Championship game and riding a 10-6 conference record into the Big Dance. Harvard, who went 12-2 in conference play and 26-4 overall, won the Ivy League.

For Harvard, Junior Forward Kyle Casey leads the team in scoring with 11.2 points a game. Senior Forward Keith Wright is pulling in a team-best 8.1 boards a game, while Junior Guard Brandyn Curry is averaging 5.0 assists per game.

Vanderbilt is led by their top scorer John Jenkins, the Junior Guard who’s averaging 19.9 points a game. Their rebounding leader is Lance Goulbourne with 6.9, and their assists leader Brad Tinsley comes in with 4.2 a game.

Here are how the two teams compare (Vandy – Harvard):

Points per game: 72.9 – 65.4

FG Pct: 45.9% – 46.7%

Opponent Avg. PPG: 65.0 – 54.8

Opponent FG Pct: 41.8% – 40.6 %

FT Pct: 69.8 – 74.6

Rebound Margin: 1.2 – 4.5

Average Steals Per Game: 5.9 – 6.0

Twitter is already chatting about the matchup: