By Henry Nichols
Staff Writer
You can always go home again, especially if you’re A.J. Ogilvy.
 
Vanderbilt’s All-SEC center and emotional leader may be the chief beneficiary of the coaching staff’s decision to take the Commodores on a five-game tour of Ogilvy’s native Australia this week. NCAA teams are only allowed to take one international team trip every four years.
 
"The destination was certainly a choice made with A.J. in mind," Vanderbilt head coach Kevin Stallings said. "When we knew we were going to go on a trip, we decided it would be a wonderful opportunity for our team to get to have more of an understanding of A.J.'s background as he has tried to understand theirs. From that standpoint, it is really a great opportunity."
 
The team flew out of Nashville Friday and made their jet-lagged debut Monday against the Dandenong Rangers, winning a 107-84 decision versus the semi-pro team about an hour outside of Melbourne. The victory came despite Dandenong adding a pair of Australian Olympic team members, Mark Worthington and Chris Anstey (featured above in the video), specifically for the Vanderbilt match.
 
"I was really pleased with the effort,” Stallings said. “We had some outstanding individual performances. A.J. Ogilvy (23 points, 16 rebounds) and Jeff Taylor (team-high 26 points) played really well and Festus Ezeli (nine points, 12 rebounds, three blocks) gave us a great effort off the bench."
 
The last Vanderbilt men’s team to make it abroad was the ’03-’04 squad, who used a preseason tour in Spain to transform from an 11-18 team the prior season to a 23-10 NCAA Tournament team that reached the program’s first Sweet 16 since 1993.
 
“I think the Americans might be a little more excited since they haven’t traveled as much as the other guys have,” Ogilvy, one of four international ‘Dores, said. “For some of them, it’ll be their first time leaving the States. I’m excited to show them around my part of the world.”
 
Stallings and his staff hope this trip serves as a major bonding experience for a squad heavy on developing underclassmen (seven sophomores, three juniors and one senior comprise the lineup of returning scholarship players with game experience at Vandy).
 
“Countless times those teams pointed to their bonding experiences overseas as something that helped give them a jump start on having great years. We certainly hope our guys can reap the same benefit from this trip,” assistant coach Brad Frederick wrote in the team’s travel blog.
 
The Commodores next play the Swinburne Kilsyth Cobras tonight (Tuesday Australian time) before heading to Sydney to play Ogilvy’s prep alma mater, The Australian Institute of Sport, on Wednesday. The team will cap their trip with games in Wollongong on Friday and Townsville on Sunday.
 
“I think one of the major goals the coaches have for the trip,” Ogilvy says, “is that we all come together more and be able to have some fun and use it as a building block for the rest of the season.”