"Story of My Life," Inside Devin McGlockton's Under The Radar Rise
In this story:
NASHVILLE—Devin McGlockton’s humility and reserved nature is wiped from his face for a second and is replaced by a smirk. It’s a posture that McGlockton often strays away from when talking about himself, but he’ll make an exception.
The Vanderbilt big man played high school football in the same conference as former Georgia tight end Oscar Delp and led the conference’s tight ends with 83 catches and 16 touchdowns his senior season. McGlockton’s father still swears that his son was “one of the best tight ends in Georgia” as a high schooler and that he was the “go-to” guy for South Forsyth high school. The McGlockton’s made an intentional effort to instill humility within their children, but it goes to the wayside for a second as their son recalls his high school football career.
“I had the best hands in Georgia, I thought,” McGlockton said. “My hands were amazing. I was like a slow Kyle Pitts.”
A football career came natural to McGlockton, he was big, he was physical and he grew up with football in mind. McGlockton’s father Leon was an all-conference football player at Division-II Fayetteville State while his uncle Chester McGlockton was a 13-year NFL veteran and will be inducted into the Clemson Hall of Fame on Nov. 8.
By the end of McGlockton’s high school career, he had a decision to make.
A few midmajors offered the Georgia native the opportunity to play basketball and football, but the path to a real future in either of the sports likely required specialization. McGlockton always told his parents that he would make a decision as to which sport he was going to choose on his 18th birthday.
McGlockton’s dad’s family background indicated that he’d end up choosing football, but his parents left him complete autonomy in his decision and believed that he would find a way to have a productive career with either option. How McGlockton was allocating his time appeared to be telling, though.
The now-Vanderbilt big man “only played football when it was football season,” but played basketball year round. When McGlockton visited Vanderbilt as a tight end, he insisted that his parents took him back to Georgia so that he could play in a basketball game. McGlockton never tipped his hand in regard to his decision, though.
“I think it really was a game-time decision as to whether he would play basketball or football in college,” McGlockton’s mom Shalae said. “I feel like he loved basketball a little bit more.”
Over three years, a phone call from Boston College head basketball coach Earl Grant in the moments following his introductory press conference and a transfer portal decision to move to Vanderbilt, it appears as if McGlockton made the right decision.
His football background still shows up, though.
“Basketball, that’s where my heart’s at now,” McGlockton said, “But, a lot of my toughness did come from football.”
Maybe it’s a result of his largely understated personality or the selfless style in which he takes the playing surface, but McGlockton has never been the center of attention. He was a three-star recruit with just one power-five basketball offer as a high schooler. He was rarely acknowledged as a high school football player despite having numbers that exceeded Delp’s.
The theme has carried over into McGlockton’s Vanderbilt career–in which he’s not often the subject of offseason practice buzz and hasn’t been selected to an SEC All-Conference team, but had an argument to be considered the Commodores’ best all-around player when it was all said and done in 2024-25.
“That’s been the story of my life,” McGlockton told Vandy on SI. “I’m not the most flashy player. I don’t talk a lot, although I talk on defense and stuff like that. That’s just the story of my game. I do the little things that show up in the big picture of the game.”
The buzz around Vanderbilt’s 2024-25 team went to high-volume guard Jason Edwards, veteran ballhandler AJ Hoggard and freshman standout Tyler Tanner, but McGlockton was among that group’s most important players.
McGlockton was one of Vanderbilt’s three double-figure scorers and led it in rebounding, blocked shots as well as field goal percentage. On a national scope, the Vanderbilt big man was 31st in the country in offensive rating and was 16th in the SEC in conference-play only offensive rating. The other notable statistical categories in which McGlockton stood out were effective field goal, offensive rebound and two-point percentage–all of which he ranked top 50 nationally in.
“When Devin McGlockton was on the court I thought we were a top 20 team in the country,” Vanderbilt head coach Mark Byington told Vandy on SI. “When Devin wasn’t on the court, I don’t know where we were, but we weren’t top 20. We dropped a lot when he wasn't on the court. He was that important to us. It wasn’t just the stats. It was everything he did.”
The lack of national coverage likely became frustrating for other members of that Vanderbilt’s roster–which defied the odds as an underdog in year one of Byington’s tenure–but McGlockton was where he was comfortable on that team.
Vanderbilt’s big man was out of the spotlight and didn't appear to be making any push towards it in his time off the floor.
“It’s not in his nature to do that,” McGlockton’s mom said. “I think he’s more of an ‘I’ll show you’ kind of a player. He’s not usually going to be very boisterous about what he can do, he’ll just go out there and do it.”
Perhaps it was due to unfamiliarity or a general naivety, but in the moments following two Vanderbilt games last season, McGlockton pushed open the squeaky door and plopped down on a leather chair in the postgame media room waiting his turn to take the podium and speak. It may appear to be an insignificant action, but McGlockton is the only Vanderbilt player to do that in the past three seasons.
The McGlockton that sits there making small talk and talking shop with a reporter isn’t the same one that exited the floor a little under half an hour ago. That McGlockton was fierce, nasty and appeared to have a message he wanted to send via tenacity and toughness.
“I love proving people wrong,” McGlockton said. “I do it often. I’ve just always had that underdog mentality and that chip on my shoulder because there’s people that have always doubted me. That’s why I play so hard.”
McGlockton knew since well before his freshman year at Boston College–when he looked at the plus-minus and saw the impact he was making in limited minutes, but never appeared to be a focal point of its team–that he’d have to scratch and claw for every bit of attention that he got.
Vanderbilt wing Tyler Nickel says that the numbers McGlockton posted in two years at Boston College mattered, but that his transition to the SEC was one that created some uncertainty surrounding what he could be. The Vanderbilt wing believes his teammate “woke a lot of people up” as a result of what he did last season, at least internally.
“I don’t think he’s underappreciated by his coaches or teammates because they know how Devin is wired,” McGlockton’s dad said. “He just wants to win, he does whatever it takes to win. He’s never underappreciated by his coaches or teammates.”
Who knows how this all ends for McGlockton and this Vanderbilt team, but it knows that if it’s going to go as far as it would like to then it has to rely on its understated big man–who will play significantly more at power forward this season as opposed to just center as a result of Vanderbilt’s changed roster makeup.
That’s a proposition that Vanderbilt is encouraged by as it enters year two under Byington. It can’t do it with only McGlockton, but it feels as if it knows what it has in him.
“I think Devin McGlockton is gonna be one of the best players in the SEC next year,” Byington said this offseason. “He did everything we asked of him last year. He would play the undersized big spot for us, but we’re gonna move him to a different position.”
The position change appears to unlock McGlockton defensively as a switchable piece that won’t have to defend players that are significantly bigger than him, but he’s not changing his mentality as a result of his changed responsibilities.
That would be a counterintuitive approach for the Vanderbilt big man–who appears to have found his niche as an efficient, lower volume swiss-army knife that can fit on just about any team.
“He’s an elite role player,” Nickel told Vandy on SI. “He’s a star in his role, which makes him a star. I don’t think that people understand that about high-level basketball. No one just does everything off rip. You have to do something elite. Glock has always been an elite rebounder, catches everything, defensively he’s relentless.”
“He plays really hard,” North Carolina transfer Jalen Washington added. “He motivates guys in different ways. He’s not a super vocal leader, but the way he plays makes you want to raise your level of play.”
McGlockton almost assuredly won’t be an All-American by the time this is all over, but he’s as good a specialist as there is in college basketball these days. That matters for this Vanderbilt team, even if it doesn’t within the national media landscape.
That’s a tradeoff that McGlockton is okay with.
_(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, Southeastern 16 and Mainstreet Nashville.
Follow joey_dwy