Inside Vanderbilt Basketball's First Win At Tennessee Since 2017

KNOXVILLE, TN—In less than five minutes, Vanderbilt would come through the tunnel in the south corner of Thompson-Boling Arena. For now, though, it’s the home of an exodus of sorts.

It’s not as if the Arena would be entirely empty at the conclusion of the stoppage that Vanderbilt’s eventual win over Tennessee was in the midst of. But, best believe the tunnel that would soon be guarded for Vanderbilt to run through was full of people in orange shirts filing out.

Vanderbilt was on the verge of doing it in this place for the first time in a long time and a number of attendees didn’t want to stick around to watch it happen. It was almost as if they were fleeing from paranormal activity. Tennessee was 14-2 at home prior to Saturday. The idea that Vanderbilt could come in and beat it would’ve been foreign in most years–and it still seemed unlikely this time–but that shouldn’t be the case anymore.

Tennessee hasn’t exactly been dominant in the Mark Byington era, but it still had a 2-1 series lead since Byington’s arrival prior to Saturday. As a program, it had won eight of the last 10 and four of the last five matchups. Vanderbilt hadn’t won in this place since 2017 prior to Saturday.

“It’s everything,” Vanderbilt wing Tyler Nickel told Vandy on SI in regard to what it means to beat Tennessee in this building. “Especially since it’s our last regular season game.  That was huge for March Madness and the SEC Tournament. I mean, it's everything. Obviously, it's a rivalry in the state. Getting a win here is huge.”

No sugarcoating this. Tennessee has owned this series for a significant period–particularly recently. Saturday indicates that Vanderbilt isn’t putting up with that idea, though. It indicated that the gap in this rivalry isn’t as big as it once appeared to be.

Vanderbilt senior Miles Keeffe is this program’s longest-tenured player and is more familiar with this place than anyone–in turn, he’s more familiar with losing here than anyone else.

His freshman season, it wasn’t much of a question. Tennessee was more physical and was just generally better than Vanderbilt. His sophomore year in this place included a trouncing that started with Vanderbilt getting down big before it could blink and ended with Jerry Stackhouse walking away before his postgame media obligations concluded. Keeffe came into Thompson-Boling Arena with a new coach as a junior, but he experienced another familiar result; a loss.

Rinse and repeat for Keeffe. His teammates and coach may have changed, but the routine was the same. Come in through the back doors to this place, warm up and watch as Vanderbilt developed a consistent routine in this place.

The routine broke on Saturday, though.

For once, Vanderbilt basketball was the aggressor in the place in which it’s often not been in games. It was nearly as physical as Tennessee was–as evidenced by the 40-to-31 final rebounding score. In a lot of ways it was just flat out better than the Volunteers were.

"I know there's pride in Vanderbilt," Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said. "I think football won up here (in Knoxville), and girls basketball won up here. It's a terrific school, a terrific (UT basketball) program. Sometimes I feel like we're chasing them, but we're going to come compete."

And compete Vanderbilt did on Saturday. It did more than that, in fact. Vanderbilt held Tennessee to 82 points on 44.3% shooting from the field and 25.0% shooting from 3-point range. The Volunteers turned it over 11 times, which resulted in 11 Vanderbilt points. Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie went for 17 points on 22 shots while turning it over five times.

For the first time in a long time, Vanderbilt also had the best player in this place. Vanderbilt guard Tyler Tanner went for 25 points on 7-for-9 shooting and seemingly always had an answer when Tennessee made a push.

In the end, Tennessee could never match what Vanderbilt did on Saturday. Vanderbilt led for 39:45 on Saturday and never trailed. Tennessee was without Nate Ament, but this wasn’t as much to do with him or a flukey down performance as it was Vanderbilt being more than capable of doing this.

“Hard fought win. I thought they had a great focus, and great belief,” Byington said. “To come in and win in this building is not easy.”

This Vanderbilt program knows that as well as anyone. In Byington’s first season, it had a chance to pull something off around these parts, but it wore down as the second half went on and left the building with a loss that ultimately caused Byington to reflect on how he had built that roster.

As Byington looks back on this season, he’ll look back on it as perhaps this group’s best win of the regular season. That’s up for debate at this point, but this one likely has the edge over its home wins over Kentucky and Alabama because of the magnitude of the moment–as well as the place–in which it did it.

If Byington really gets this program rolling consistently like it appears as if he’s going to, then this could mean even more than that. This could be the game that swung this rivalry back to one that’s played on even footing and can elevate Vanderbilt into the drivers’ seat of it if this all goes to plan.

Even if that doesn’t become the case, this is a day that people around Vanderbilt’s program remember for a long time.

“It was cool to get that,” Vanderbilt forward AK Okereke told Vandy on SI. “For the program, and for the history.”