How Vanderbilt Basketball is Responding to Two-Consecutive Losses

NASHVILLE—If there ever was such a thing as an adversity-less season, Vanderbilt had as close to that as anyone in the country through the first 16 games of 2025-26. It was 16-0. It had taken down nearly everyone in its path by double digits. It was rolling.

Then, BAM.

The adversity that Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington promised this team it would get at some point down the line based on the gauntlet of an SEC schedule that awaited them is here. If they didn’t believe that it was coming, they can now visualize and feel what Byington has been preaching. If Vanderbilt’s 80-64 loss to Texas in which it was a shell of itself wasn’t enough to get the point across, Vanderbilt’s Saturday loss to Florida–in which it essentially threw its hands up as if it realized that it can play well and still lose–was.

Byington said two summers ago that he wouldn’t know exactly what he had in his first Vanderbilt team until they got down on the road and had to come together. Perhaps the circumstance isn’t exactly the same here, but this team is down figuratively and has to find its way back.

This is when it really finds out what it’s made of mentally and where it needs to become one. Byington doesn’t appear to have any worries in regard to a potential fracture.

“It'll make us stronger, make us better, and we'll bounce back from it,” Byington said of Saturday’s loss to Florida. “When you're playing really good teams in this league, at this level, sometimes it comes down to minute little things, an inch or two here or there, and we win the game. We'll keep getting better. We'll keep working on it.”

Byington’s team sits in a position that his 2024-25 team was in four times a season ago. The first two weeks in which this program lost two-consecutive games, it popped up off the mat and found a way into a win before the streak extended to three. The final two times, it allowed a losing streak to form.

Perhaps the difference in those weeks was more about its strength of opponent and was a coincidence rather than an indicator that Byington’s first Vanderbilt team wore down, but its late losing streaks ultimately cost it a few seed lines on Selection Sunday. This Vanderbilt team doesn’t have its back against the wall like that team did down the stretch of last season, but it’s got to find a way to get back into its winning ways quickly if it’s going to contend for an SEC Championship or a top four seed in the NCAA Tournament.

This Vanderbilt team has just three scholarship returners from Byington’s first team, but each of them have internalized what it’s going to take in order to get this thing rolling again with last season’s experience in mind.

“Just a short-term memory,” Vanderbilt guard Tyler Tanner said. “We're gonna lose games, it’s gonna happen in the SEC. So, I mean, we're gonna learn from this, but we're not gonna harp on the negatives or anything.  We're just gonna try to get better and come back and win on Tuesday.”

With the way this schedule shakes out, Vanderbilt could very well drop its third-consecutive game Tuesday night in Fayetteville as it faces Arkansas, but that’s okay. Vanderbilt is projected to take down the Razorbacks 88-87, but this thing isn’t over if it doesn’t. Tanner and his teammates are in the midst of an inevitable rough patch that seemingly every team in this league goes through each season.

The margin will be significantly smaller if Vanderbilt can’t end its losing streak on Tuesday night, but this team still is what it appears to be on the surface. Vanderbilt’s offense improved in the metrics after its Saturday loss and it dropped just one spot in KenPom.

“We're not concerned,” Tanner said. “This is the best league in the country. We know that every night there's gonna be a battle. There are gonna be nights where people have really good games against us. So we're just gonna put these losses behind us and keep working.”

The naive perspective that a young team would have in this situation is that a stretch like Vanderbilt is enduring is abnormal or concerning.

This team knows better.

“Every game is a good game,” Vanderbilt wing Tyler Nickel said. “Regardless of what rankings and whatever poll, like, everybody's good.  So, we expect a battle every game, and we're gonna have a lot more games where we're in this situation. We just got to find a way to come out on top.”