Don't Let This Moment Define Vanderbilt Basketball's Special Season. Column
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OKLAHOMA CITY—With 47 seconds to go in Vanderbilt’s thriller with Nebraska at PayCom Center, Tyler Tanner brought the ball up and this Vanderbilt team had a chance to cement its legacy as one of the greatest in program history.
Oh, the naivety that came with that moment and its tied score.
47 seconds of game time later and Tanner was laying out on the floor in the seconds following his halfcourt heave falling to the floor after jumping away from the back rim. The shot could’ve made this team–and Tanner–legendary, yet all it did was teach this group something about gutting heartbreak and end its season.
Tanner–as well as every one of his teammates that Vandy on SI polled–thought the shot was falling, yet cruelty won in the end. The Vanderbilt guard says that he believes the missed shot will haunt him forever. In a way it will have that same effect on this Vanderbilt team.
Vanderbilt was ranked nearly the entire way. It pushed the program’s wins record all season. It is one of just eight teams in program history to win an NCAA Tournament game. It went on the road and won at Tennessee. It secured a five seed for the first time since 2011-12. It won an NCAA Tournament game for the first time since 2011-12, as well. Yet, a lot of that won’t be at the forefront of this group’s memory–or anyone’s memory of it.
It’s harsh, but it’s reality for this Vanderbilt program. Say whatever you will about the season it had, it’s always going to have the cloud of that moment hanging over it.
But, this is also the type of team, the type of season that shouldn't be defined by its worst moment. It's the type that indicated this program can compete with the country's best. Vanderbilt's staff had some misses in the transfer portal, but it still threw out a team that was ranked in the AP Top 25 for all of conference play.
Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington is analytically driven, but he also thinks heavily in the lens of memories. A good portion of college basketball's audience will primarily remember Tanner's miss and the way this all ended for this Vanderbilt team, but this group shouldn't.
It will always have its SEC Tournament wins over Florida and Tennessee, its 16-0 start that put it among the country's best and a late run in SEC play that allowed it to believe anything was possible once it got to dancing.
“This is such a great group,” Byington said. “I mean, an unbelievable group to coach, to be around every single day. We started this thing in June, and every single day -- we didn't want it to end. I know they didn't want it to end.”
As Vanderbilt exited the PayCom Center through the back door on Saturday night, though, this was over. Vanderbilt had the dynamic guardplay to make a real run at this thing. It had a chip on its shoulder. It had a group of old guys who had been here before. All the essential ingredients were here for this group to make a deep push.
There it was in the locker room postgame as AK Okereke stared off into the distance as he seemingly made an effort to wrap his mind around how something like that could possibly have happened to this group. Vanderbilt big man Jalen Washington sat to Okereke’s left with his head down and eventually received a hug from Vanderbilt strength and conditioning coach Brady Welsh. Vanderbilt big man Devin McGlockton also embraced Welsh for a hug at his locker after speaking with the media.
As Tanner walked in a few minutes later, he was supposed to do so as a hero after a performance that made the country fall in love with him. Tanner had that type of performance, but all anyone will remember from it was his lowest moment, the one that broke his heart. It felt like a dystopian as Tanner walked back to his locker, but it was reality.
“I just love this team so much,” Tanner said. “This is my favorite team I've probably ever been on. Just thinking about it being over and never playing a game with this exact group of guys, it's just hard."
The good news for Tanner is that this group has plenty of memories to its name. The bad news; he’s right. This is it for Tyler Nickel, Duke Miles, Jalen Washington and Devin McGlockton. All of them are out of eligibility and will have to move on. Tanner’s decision as to whether to return or depart for the NBA Draft will loom over the entire offseason. As that group got off the plane on Saturday night, it may have been one of the last times they’re all together in the same place at once.
While they were together, though, they elevated Vanderbilt from a bubble team to a place that expects to make the NCAA Tournament every season. Perhaps they were upset on Saturday night, but they were standard changers around Nashville.
Vanderbilt now has a season in which it was top 15 in every major metric for all of conference play under its belt. The idea that Vanderbilt was in a game that had Sweet 16 implications would’ve been completely foreign when a few of these guys came to Vanderbilt’s campus.
They’ve made this type of game the type that this program expects to play in, though. This group made sure of it.
“I think you remember it how it needs to be remembered,” Miles said. “Obviously we broke a lot of school records. We came in here, we know people had us as the underdogs, and we overcame a lot as a team. So I think we’re going to be well-remembered the way we need to be.”
Okereke says this group should be remembered for the way it was desperate to win every night while Nickel praises the way it came together quickly despite returning just three scholarship guys. Watching it indicated that both of those things appeared to define how this group got here.
Where it got and what it achieved eclipses anything that this program has done since any of its players were in elementary school. In the grand scope of this, this Vanderbilt team is a top 10 team in program history. Instead of embracing that reality these days, though, Vanderbilt is left thinking about what it could’ve achieved and what it was all but robbed of.
That's okay for now, but this group has bigger things to think about. It has better memories to embrace once this has all passed.
“It’s going to take a while for us to get over, but I think it's going to be a point that we're going to look back and think of the unbelievable journey this season has been, how great these guys were to coach, how great these guys were for Vanderbilt, the memories they made along the way,” Byington said. “I'm really going to miss this group. I'm really, really going to miss this group.”
_(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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