Chandler Bing Didn't Have A School A Year Ago. Now, He's An Essential Piece for Vanderbilt Basketball.
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NASHVILLE—Right about now, Chandler Bing was supposed to get his cue to exit the locker room in a sweatsuit and start forging his path to the bus. Perhaps he’d flash a friendly hello to a few media members or shake a hand, but he would leave the 30-minute talking period to Vanderbilt’s rotational players.
As Bing joined Vanderbilt’s program in the early summer, that inevitably appeared to be his fate–at least that’s what some on Vanderbilt’s staff privately expected at the time. Players who don’t check into a game aren’t required to stay and speak like everyone else, and Bing was set to be a developmental project of sorts. He certainly wasn’t expected to play 23 minutes and guard the other team’s best player in a rivalry game. Not everyone on the roster can make a million dollars and not everyone could play, that appeared to be alright by Bing.
As he sat at his corner locker in Vanderbilt’s Bridgestone Arena locker room after its SEC Tournament win over Tennessee, though, no managers came to tap Bing on the shoulder. No relief was given. Bing was going to have to meet the media like all the other big guns on this Vanderbilt team.
The reason why; Bing is just like those guys. He played just like them. He contributed down the stretch of a meaningful Vanderbilt win just like they did. And he’s done that all season–enough to allow members of this Vanderbilt program to believe that he’ll transcend this 3-and-D role a year from now.
“I've told people since the start of the season, we have a lot of similarities,” Vanderbilt guard Tyler Tanner told Vandy on SI. “He’s just a dog. He'll do anything to win, unselfish. And that drive that he has, like, I told him; I see the same thing in me. And that was something that brought us closer.”
The similarities aren’t all that difficult to see upon a zoom in between Tanner and Bing’s profiles. Both made a name as private school stars that a number of evaluators didn’t believe could translate to power-five basketball. Both mask their achievements with a general affability and humility. Each were ranked as three-stars by the time their signing days came around. Neither had anywhere near a rolodex of power-five offers. Here they are, though. Tanner has stepped into stardom while Bing is mirroring the Vanderbilt star’s freshman-year trajectory.
Bing’s warm and friendly demeanor may hide his edge, but he’s Vanderbilt’s biggest bulldog on the defensive end and has bypassed a few veterans on the way to a rotational role as a result. Since Bing snatched that role early in non-conference play, he’s yet to give it back.
The freshman guard is averaging just 3.6 points per game and is shooting 28.9% from 3-point range, but imagining Vanderbilt earning a five seed in the NCAA Tournament without Bing in the picture is jarringly difficult. A number of its signature moments this season–notably one in which Bing broke a piece of the rim off in the SEC Tournament–wouldn’t be ingrained in this fanbase’s memory forever without the freshman guard.
All those things have happened, though. Vanderbilt never knew it needed Bing. But, it did. Luckily for Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington and company, they got him.
"He's tough, he can rebound, he can really guard,” Byington said during non-conference play. "He does some things we really need right now."
In an area that has slowly become a hotbed for power-five basketball players, Bing sat there looking around wondering why he wasn’t in line to fulfill that same trajectory.
Bing’s high school alone has been home to NBA big man Wendell Carter Jr., current Penn State forward Josh Reed and NBA G-Leaguer Matthew Cleveland since 2017. Bing is now a part of its illustrious history of producing power-five athletes. He always appeared to feel as if he was good enough to be one of them, but he couldn’t find someone to believe that about him.
As a result, the thoughts crept in.
“I definitely did some of that comparison,” Bing told Vandy on SI. “I always tried to kind of catch myself when I was comparing myself to others and tell myself that, look ‘their journey is their journey and my journey is my journey.’”
If Bing hadn’t been ambitious enough to believe that there was more out there for him, he’d be sitting in a dorm room in San Marcos, Texas, reflecting on the unfair nature of the SunBelt’s six-way tiebreaker for second place. Bing would’ve been a part of a group that finished fifth and was forced to play an extra two games than the second-place team did. He would’ve fallen short of the NCAA Tournament, too.
Bing values humility, but he complemented it with a belief that he would be able to transcend the platform the SunBelt could offer him. The now-Vanderbilt guard was in the midst of what he believed was a breakout senior season of sorts and wanted to test his market. Perhaps this would finally be the moment in which he could find fulfillment in his self belief.
The now-Vanderbilt wing knew the upside that could come with his decision to open up his recruitment. He also knew, though, that he’d be putting some pressure on himself.
“Every game, you’re going out to show something, to prove something,” Bing said. “It was definitely different.”
Turns out Bing proved enough for at least one power-five program to believe in him. Vanderbilt’s staff started contacting Bing’s high school coaches early in the season. By December, Bing was in direct communication with the Vanderbilt staff–and particularly Jon Cremins, who appeared to be bullish on Bing throughout the process.
Bing visited Vanderbilt unofficially for its Feb. 22 win over Ole Miss, had Vanderbilt staffers out to one of his high school games in March.
The Vanderbilt staff lightened up their push on Bing as their season accelerated into one that put them in the NCAA Tournament, but they made enough of an impression on Bing to pique his interest. When he visited officially in April, his mind was all but made up.
Bing is the type of player that has allowed Vanderbilt to rise quickly in the Byington tenure. Vanderbilt’s player-compensation budget is far from below average–and is expected to be that again this cycle–but it’s succeeded because of its successful evaluations in the margins. Bing is perhaps its best testimonial to date, and–non-coincidentally–Byington has his best team to date with Bing on the roster.
“He’s somebody that I think was extremely underrecruited,” Byington told Vandy on SI in the summer. “When he went against good players he would either hold his own or outplay them.”
Bing’s grandparents has never let him forget the day–well before he was born–that Martin Luther King Jr. came to New Dimension Church in Atlanta. It’s a day that they’ll never forget and one that validates Bing’s childhood church–which he describes as a family church where he knew everyone involved.
Even without MLK Jr.’s appearance at New Dimension, though, Bing’s upbringing would’ve been heavily reliant upon the church. Bing’s grandfather is a pastor. He calls his grandmother the first lady of the church. Bing’s mother sang on the praise and worship team while he was a kid, too.
“I was going to church every Sunday growing up,” Bing said. “That was always great.”
When Bing fell into comparing himself and his journey to others throughout the recruiting process, he stopped to pray often in an effort to come to grips with the uncertainty that surrounded him at that time. Looking back, the Vanderbilt guard says that God was with him on his unique career path.
Since Bing has moved to Nashville and had to spend time away from his Atlanta-based church community, he’s searched for something similar in college Bible studies around Nashville. Bing has also ingratiated his prayer life into his game-by-game pregame routine throughout his freshman season.
“That’s definitely been a big part of me as a person,” Bing said in regard to the church and what it’s put inside of him. “I just try to say that ‘what God has for you is for you and nobody else.’”
Tennessee forward Nate Ament could’ve had all his accolades lined behind him as he pounded the ball on the floor and drove at Bing on the left wing at Memorial Gymnasium. Ament is a former five-star recruit, McDonald’s All-American and is a projected lottery pick by every service that puts out a mock draft.
At the end of the play, though, it was Bing celebrating as Ament came up short and the Vanderbilt freshman just put together his most noteworthy defensive play to date. The play came in a loss, but it had some long-term significance because of what it indicated about Bing.
The Vanderbilt freshman went at Ament as if their recruiting profiles were the same. He looked uniquely comfortable doing so, because this isn’t anything new for him.
Bing hasn’t been handed much of anything throughout this basketball journey. He feels as if he’s had to go the extra mile in a multitude of ways to get to the same places others have. Now that he’s got his chance, he’s not forgetting that.
“Once I got this opportunity I knew I got to go attack it to show these other schools what they were missing out on,” Bing said. “My journey was definitely different.”
Bing says that a key factor in him getting to where he’s gotten to is playing with a chip on his shoulder and dog-like mentality. The Vanderbilt freshman may not be the most talented player on the floor in any game he plays this season. He may not be in the top three. But, he wants to be considered as one of the most impactful in each game.
Spoiler alert; he’s gotten to that point.
That’s why Byington so clearly seemed to trust Bing when previous track record indicated that he’d give minutes to veteran transfers like Mike James or Tyler Harris. That’s why he hasn’t lost that trust in Vanderbilt’s most important games. Bing may not have had a school this time a year ago, but he’s found one that’s embraced him for all that he can provide.
“I've been impressed with Bing,” Vanderbilt big man Jayden Leverett told Vandy on SI. “He's been doing a lot of great things, made a lot of big plays. He gets rebounds. He does a little bit of everything, so I'm excited to see him in the NCAA tournament.”
_(1)-b3e453dfe426b2dd4b83a12540ebdb37.jpeg "Joey Dwyer")
Joey Dwyer is the lead writer on Vanderbilt Commodores On SI. He found his first love in college sports at nearby Lipscomb University and decided to make a career of telling its best stories. He got his start doing a Notre Dame basketball podcast from his basement as a 14-year-old during COVID and has since aimed to make that 14-year-old proud. Dwyer has covered Vanderbilt sports for three years and previously worked for 247 Sports and Rivals. He contributes to Seth Davis' Hoops HQ, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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