How Mark Byington, Vanderbilt Basketball Are Using a Proverb to Approach Battle 4 Atlantis

Mark Byington acknowledges that his team may get sick of the consistent quotes and Proverbs that he throws out in order to convey his message, but he doesn’t intend on straying from his linguistic style any time soon.

The Vanderbilt head coach brought up Mike Tomlin’s “the standard is the standard” quote throughout the week leading up to Vanderbilt’s buy game with Texas Southern and has a new proverb of note as his team prepares for a three-day stretch in the Battle 4 Atlantis.

“How do you eat an elephant?” Byington said from the podium in Atlantis on Tuesday, “It’s one bite at a time.”

Byington’s team is the highest-ranked group in the Atlantis field at No. 15 in Kenpom–the closest is Saint Mary’s, which is ranked No. 26–but it believes that if it’s going to come back to Nashville on Saturday with a trophy and a celebration, it can’t put the cart ahead of the horse.

Vanderbilt opens the tournament on Wednesday afternoon against Western Kentucky–which is 4-0 with its best wins coming against Tennessee State and Eastern Kentucky–and has made an intentional effort to focus on the Hilltoppers rather than the scope of what it hopes to accomplish in the next three days.

Vanderbilt basketball — Nov 20, 2025; Nashville, Tennessee, USA; Vanderbilt Commodores forward Jalen Washington (13) lays the ball in over Texas Southern Tigers forward Troy Hupstead (2) during the first half at Memorial Gymnasium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images | Steve Roberts-Imagn Images

“I would say it’s just taking it day-by-day,” Vanderbilt big man Jalen Washington said of the Commodores mentality heading into the tournament. “We’re resting our bodies the rest of this day and in preparation for Western Kentucky. We’re expending all of our energy to win that game and then we’re going to rest and recover and get ready for the next game.”

Byington said he’s encouraged by his team having what he believes is an ample amount of depth in a tournament setting, but that his team is “not going to worry” about what happens after Western Kentucky until the buzzer sounds on its Wednesday-afternoon game.

The Commodores could get VCU or South Florida in their second game, but they’ll have to take care of business on day one prior to that. Vanderbilt is ranked No. 24 in the AP Top 25 and is No. 15 in KenPom’s adjusted efficiency metric, but its most difficult stretch yet comes this week.

Byington’s coaches’ mentality will never allow him to be completely content with what he sees throughout the week, but he’ll at least find out how close his group is to where it wants to be.

“Every game you learn something, but when you have these games back-to-back-to-back, it's a ton of things you gain,” Byington said. “We talk about growth in getting better. The message I had to the team yesterday as we were about to practice in Nashville and about to come down here, is ‘we're not close to how good we're going to be.’ Individuals can improve, I can improve, our team can improve and we're hungry for that.”

The second-year Vanderbilt head coach admits that his team’s “ridiculous” offensive production–which is ranked No. 2 in Bart Torvik and No. 5 in KenPom after four 100+-point games–likely isn’t sustainable, but he hopes that his team will be better as a whole in its seventh game on Thursday than it is in its sixth on Wednesday.

Nov 12, 2025; Nashville, Tennessee, USA; Vanderbilt Commodores head coach Mark Byington yells to his team against the Eastern Kentucky Colonels during the second half at Memorial Gymnasium. Mandatory Credit: Steve Roberts-Imagn Images | Steve Roberts-Imagn Images

That wasn’t exactly the case for this program last season as it won its first two games in the Charleston Classic and dropped the final to Ben McCollum’s Drake team, but Byington says his group learned the most from the final that they dropped.

This Vanderbilt team is favored to leave Atlantis undefeated, with a different result than it finished with in Charleston last season, but it’s not thinking that way as it steps on to the practice floor and goes about its day in paradise on Tuesday. All of that can come on Friday if this group plays the way it knows it can, but not right now.

“All of our attention is on Western Kentucky,” Byington said. “We’re gonna try to play it the best we can and then we’ll play either South Florida or VCU, but that’s not in our peripheral right now.”