AUBURN, Ala. — The Vanderbilt Commodores, for the first time in a while, are going bowling.
They’ve got plenty of football to play before then, though, and opportunities to make sure their postseason destination is as pleasant as possible.
Diego Pavia threw a pair of touchdown passes, including a 4-yarder to Eli Stowers with 4:18 left, and Vanderbilt became bowl eligible for the first time since 2018 with a 17-7 win over Auburn on Saturday.
The Commodores (6-3, 3-2 Southeastern Conference) locked up another win in their surprising season with a 14-play, 78-yard drive that consumed 8 minutes and 53 seconds of game clock. It was kept alive when Auburn’s Keldric Faulk was penalized for leverage while trying to block a field-goal attempt by Brock Taylor, setting up first-and-goal at the 4-yard line.
“This is a great moment for our program and one that we need to celebrate the right way,” Vanderbilt fourth-year head coach Clark Lea said after emerging from a lengthy and noisy celebration in the visitors’ locker room at Jordan-Hare Stadium.
“I think if you look at where we’ve come in, I guess, what amounts to 11 months now, we’ve had an incredible journey. I feel like in December we probably hit rock bottom coming out of last season,” added Lea, a former Commodores fullback.
The Tigers (3-6, 1-5), meanwhile, fell one loss away from their fourth straight losing season.
Pavia was contained much of the way but still delivered a second straight win over Auburn. He was 9-of-22 passing for 143 yards with a 28-yard touchdown to AJ Newberry. Pavia led New Mexico State to a huge upset of the Tigers last season before transferring to the SEC and helping produce a much less surprising victory.
Vanderbilt was winless in eight SEC games last season, ending on a 10-game skid overall. Then came Pavia, Stowers and other key newcomers who helped produce a Sprite-splashing postgame celebration Saturday on the Plains.
“We weren’t going to be denied this opportunity today, and I feel that way about this team,” said Lea, whose son Jack was seated next to him. “They earned a right to celebrate. They earned the right to be excited, and I enjoyed being in the middle of it.”
Pavia, meanwhile, got to once again beat one of the teams that wasn’t interested in recruiting him.
“A lot of people didn’t take a chance on me,” he said. “They’re just another team that didn’t, so I just want to make them pay for what they did.”
Auburn’s last effort to stay in the game ended when Towns McGough’s 52-yard field-goal attempt fell short for his second miss. By the time the Tigers fumbled away their last possession in the final two minutes, most of the fans had already hit the exits.
The Tigers managed to tie it at 7 going into halftime. They converted two fourth-down plays in their own territory before Payton Thorne’s 30-yard touchdown pass to Rivaldo Fairweather.
The Commodores regained the lead on Taylor’s 31-yard field goal late in the third quarter. They got the chance after replay officials overturned a called fumble by Moni Jones, and it was set up by Martel Hight’s 39-yard punt return to the 21.
Vanderbilt held Jarquez Hunter to 50 yards on 12 carries a week after he ran for 278 in a win over Kentucky.
Thorne was 20-of-29 passing for 239 yards and a touchdown.
“This has been too often a story this year for us, for our players and our fans and, you know, just very disappointed,” Tigers second-year coach Hugh Freeze said. “I thought our defense played their guts out and played well enough to win.”
Auburn didn’t convert a third down until the first play of the fourth quarter, whiffing on its first nine attempts and going 2-of-13. The Tigers, who have an open date next weekend, must win their remaining regular-season games — against the University of Louisiana at Monroe, No. 10 Texas A&M and No. 14 Alabama — to become bowl eligible.
The Commodores added to a big season that already included an upset of Alabama, which was No. 1 at the time, back home in Nashville on Oct. 5. They found a way to win on the road this week despite getting outgained 327-227 in total offense. It’s the first time Vanderbilt has beaten Alabama and Auburn in the same season since 1955.
Vanderbilt offensive lineman Steven Hubbard riled a couple of Auburn players after the game, crowing about Pavia improving to 3-0 against Freeze (including a 2022 win over Liberty).
“Nonsense. It’s just football talk,” Hubbard said of what the Tigers said in response. “At the end of the day, they lost, we won.”
The Commodores host South Carolina next Saturday before their final open date of the season. The Gamecocks (5-3, 3-3) moved within one win of bowl eligibility Saturday with their upset of Texas A&M, which had been the last SEC team without a loss in league play this season.
After their weekend off, the Commodores visit No. 16 LSU on Nov. 23 before closing the regular season at home against No. 7 Tennessee.