Mark Byington Rips His Team's Performance After Arkansas Loss

After what Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington witnessed down the stretch in his team’s 93-68 loss to Arkansas, he felt as if it was time to speak from the heart as he sat down at the scorers table at Bud Walton Arena.

Any thought that Vanderbilt’s generally-levelheaded head coach would take it easy on this group and describe his team’s 93-68 loss as merely a byproduct of the process or the inevitability of SEC road games went out the window within the first five seconds of his hit. Want sugarcoating? Don’t turn to this guy for it.

“Just kind of speaking from the heart, that was embarrassing,” Byington said in his postgame radio hit. “That's the first time this year that I felt like we didn't compete, and we weren't tough and we got on our heels right away. They’re an athletic team who plays great in this building, we know it, but at the same time, I got to do a better job with our guys, 'cause that wasn't who we are.”

In some ways, Byington is right. His group is surely better than one that should be trailing by 31 to Arkansas. It’s one that believed it was among the contenders for the SEC regular season title. Its Tuesday night performance didn’t indicate that.

The last week–which has included a three-game losing streak for this program–has indicated that it has some work to do in order to be considered a real SEC threat again. At the very least, it has a few issues that it’s got to fix in order to get itself back in that conversation. Vanderbilt has to find its way out of last in the SEC’s defensive efficiency metrics. It’s got to find some semblance of an answer on the glass.

Perhaps bigger than all, it’s got to find itself again. Byington appears to be all over that thought.

“That’s the type of performance where you want to make changes as a coach,” Byington said. “I didn't do a good job prepping them. We came into the game with the wrong mentality.”

Byington ripped his team for being “scared” around the basket, how passive it was in the first five minutes of the game, not knowing its reads, not being connected on offense and allowing Arkansas to get out in transition.

Vanderbilt was outscored 50-22 in the paint, 21-8 on the fastbreak and was outshot 57.8%-to-37.9% from the field. That was a disaster, a nightmare and whatever you want to call it for Vanderbilt basketball. Vanderbilt was outclassed in just about every way on Tuesday night. One team on the floor looked like a second-weekend team while the other one didn’t.

Spoiler alert, Vanderbilt wasn’t the team that looked like a second-weekend team.

By the first media timeout, Vanderbilt guard Mike James was on the floor rolling around in pain, Vanderbilt was trailing 9-2–and could’ve been trailing by more had Arkansas made more open looks–and the contingent of Arkansas fans on hand was calling the Hogs. The scene was reminiscent of a superhero in the moments after it lost its powers. Byington appears to be sick of seeing that.

“That was a poor performance and we got to get back to work,” Byington said, “And put our finger on exactly the things that went wrong.”