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Things were never in doubt at Memorial Gymnasium.

Arkansas scored the game’s first nine points and never trailed on its way to an easy 92-71 win over Vanderbilt on Saturday.

For the first time this season, the Razorbacks have won back-to-back SEC games, with Saturday’s victory improving them to 12-4 overall and 4-4 in conference play. They have also won seven straight against the Commodores.

It was as complete of a game as Arkansas has played since the start of SEC play and head coach Eric Musselman said he didn’t think his team had many lapses at all.

“Not often you go on the road and lead for 39 minutes and the opponent doesn’t lead in a game for one second,” Musselman said. “Really happy with our pace of play, really happy with how hard we played, really happy with how we shared the basketball.”

Moses Moody led the Razorbacks with 26 points and Jalen Tate chipped in a season-high 25. It’s the third time a pair of Arkansas teammates have scored at least 20 points in the same game this season, with all three coming in SEC play and five different players combining for those performances.

Moody, the star freshman, was an efficient 10-of-16 shooting that included six point-blank buckets after struggling to a career-low five points against Auburn earlier this week. He also had a team-high eight rebounds.

“I thought he ran the floor really hard today,” Musselman said. “I thought he really, really ran exceptionally well in transition. I thought his teammates did a good job finding him and then obviously when you get three offensive rebounds, that’s going to give you a little more cushion for shot attempts.”

In addition to the 25 points he scored himself, Tate also got his teammates involved by dishing out eight assists that led to another 18 points while turning the ball over just once. He had averaged 4.4 turnovers over the previous five games.

“With Jalen, putting him in pick and rolls helped,” Musselman said. “We talked about cutting harder (and) I think our cuts helped. … I just thought our spacing was really good. I thought that really helped him limit the turnovers, and nobody dropped any of his passes.”

The slow starts that have plagued the Razorbacks recently didn’t follow them to Nashville, as they jumped out to the aforementioned 9-0 lead and grabbed the first six rebounds of the game.

Scotty Pippen Jr. finally got Vanderbilt on the board with a layup nearly 3.5 minutes in and after the Commodores had missed their first four shots.

After needing an average of 11 minutes and 15 seconds its last three games, Arkansas reached double figures when Tate knocked down an open three-pointer that made it 12-6 at the 15:10 mark.

“I think we really came out focused on the defensive end,” senior Justin Smith said. “We really kind of let our offense take care of itself and we really wanted to make them uncomfortable defensively. Once we were able to get stops, we were able to get out and run and get some easy baskets.”

The Razorbacks pushed their lead to 10 with a 6-0 spurt, their first double-digit lead since the 30-point blowout of Georgia two weeks earlier, but Vanderbilt fought back into it.

On three separate occasions, the Commodores cut the deficit to three, but they couldn’t get it any closer than that. Issac McBride - a Little Rock native - missed a shot that would have made it a 1-point game the first time, while Arkansas immediately answered with layups by JD Notae and Justin Smith the other two times.

From that point on, the Razorbacks steadily built their lead back up to double digits, with a Vance Jackson Jr. three-pointer making it 40-30 with about two minutes left in the half.

“It’s not easy for a player to sit the first 16 minutes and then you put him in the last four minutes of the first half,” Musselman said. “Vance came in and he banged a three. I thought Vance’s shot selection was really good.”

A three by Tate and dunk - off a nice pass from Jackson - by Connor Vanover briefly pushed Arkansas’ lead to 12, but a layup by Maxwell Evans in the closing seconds made it 45-35 at halftime.

The Razorbacks shot 51.5 percent from the floor and 42.9 percent (6 of 14) and had excellent ball movement, as they had 14 assists on 17 baskets in the first half.

“We tried not to run a lot of half-court sets,” Musselman said. “We’ve added a few things to our open offense and our opportunity break when we’re playing out of the flow of the game. I thought some guys really got into their comfort zone offensively tonight.”

Without Dylan Disu, the SEC’s second-leading rebounder at 8.4 per game, the Commodores were dominated on the glass in the first half, as Arkansas out-rebounded them 23-13 with seven offensive boards.

It was much of the same in the second half. Vanderbilt cut its deficit to single digits twice, but never really threatened the Razorbacks.

Early in the half, Notae started a fast break and fired a pass down the floor to Tate, who lobbed it up for Smith - who finished the alley oop to make it 14-point game. It was two of Smith’s 12 points in his third game back from ankle surgery. He also grabbed seven rebounds in his 26 minutes.

“He played hard,” Musselman said. “He crashed the offensive backboards. He always gives us a completely and utterly different look from a defensive standpoint, because we can switch with him, we can shadow and hit with him and we can extend our defense because of his great lateral quickness.”

Arkansas led by at least 15 points over the final 10-plus minutes and cruised to a 21-point win in Nashville.

Despite expressing a desire to shorten his bench to a seven-man rotation, Musselman ended up playing nine different players at least nine minutes each.

“I thought each guy who checked into the game did a really good job,” Musselman said. “I think everybody really, really played well.”

Pippen, the SEC’s second-leading scorer, was held under his season average of 21.2 points. He scored just 15 on 6 of 14 shooting, with Tate serving as his primary defender the entire game.

On top of that, Pippen - the son of NBA Hall of Famer Scottie Pippen - went just 3 of 4 from the free throw line despite coming into the game averaging seven attempts.

“Not only did Jalen really score the ball and have a ton of assists, eight assists, four steals,” Musselman said, “(but) then add in the fact that he held the second-leading scorer in the league to under 50 percent and to only score 15 points and to probably have what I’m going to assume was close to a season low in free throws attempted.”

What really stood out about Saturday’s win, though, was how smoothly Arkansas operated on offense.

The Razorbacks shot a season-high 57.1 percent from the floor - including a scorching 63.3 percent in the second half - and eclipsed 90 points for the fifth time.

They finished with 22 assists on 36 field goals while committing only 11 turnovers. It was the first time they’ve had twice as many assists as turnovers since the Central Arkansas game (26 to 8) on Dec. 12.

“We spent some time just talking about our opportunity break where we bring that thing down and we kick ahead and cut through and the ball goes through the trail man, and then to the second side and then back to the third side,” Musselman said. “We added some cuts that maybe opened up some dribble drives, but I just thought the players shared the ball today really, really well.”

Arkansas will try to get above .500 in SEC play when it welcomes Ole Miss to Bud Walton Arena on Wednesday. Tip off is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. CT and the game will be televised on the SEC Network.