"Unbreakable Confidence," Inside Tyler Nickel's Standout Outing Against Wake Forest

Wake Forest’s Tre’Von Spillers and Juke Harris closed out simultaneously on the right wing as Tyler Nickel reached up to catch a pass from caught it, took one dribble to the right of Spillers and let it rip.

It’s the type of shot that is emblematic of what Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington referred to last season as Nickel’s “unbreakable” confidence. Nobody else on the floor would’ve attempted the shot Nickel did as he quickly set both feet and fired it up while off balance. That was fitting for Nickel and the day he was having, though.

It was even more fitting that the shot would go in.

Nickel had already completed a four-point play on a baseline out of bounds set, blocked a shot that he visibly called “weak s***” and had made three additional shots from beyond the arc. The the look he got–which most would likely consider a bad shot–going in appeared to be inevitable. Particularly after what happened on Saturday night.

“I felt good in shootaround yesterday,” Nickel said on the postgame radio. “When I was shooting today before the game I just got in my zone, got in my rhythm. When I got the first one to go, I was like ‘oh, yeah, this is gonna be a good one.’”

Tyler Nickel — Nickel rarely missed on Sunday after a strong Saturday shootaround. | Gavin Nevill

Turns out Nickel was right. When his off-balance shot dropped, it allowed Nickel to eclipse his 14.4 point per game scoring average before the under-eight media timeout on Sunday and kept Vanderbilt’s offense humming. It started on Vanderbilt’s first play of the afternoon in which Byington looked to test out an action with Nickel as a decoy.

The play developed and Wake Forest “made a mistake” by losing Nickel, who went from decoy to shotmaker. That sparked a blowup performance by Nickel in Sunday’s game. By the end of it, Nickel had 26 points, a career-high eight makes from 3-point range and had gone 9-for-12 from the field.

“He’s not even thinking right now, he’s just catching and redirecting the ball to the basket,” an announcer said in the second half of Sunday’s game.

As Byington sat on a June phone call and told Vandy on SI that he believed that Nickel would be one of the SEC’s best players, this is what he had in mind. This is what Byington saw each day down the stretch of summer practice when it occurred to him that his standout wing had more consistently taken ownership of practice and was more consistently putting on impressive displays of shotmaking. Byington certainly hasn’t seen anything from the 6-foot-7 wing that would allow him to think anything other than what he already thought about his sharpshooter prior to the season.

Nickel’s impressive displays are now showing up as consistently as they ever have for Nickel’s career. He’s Vanderbilt’s most underrated story of growth and has become enough of a flamethrower that an off-night like he had in a 2-for-10 3-point shooting performance against Memphis is more of an anomaly than anything.

“His confidence is unbreakable,” Byington repeated on the radio after Vanderbilt’s Sunday win. “He knows what he can do. He puts in so much work. He’s an everyday. Our guys found him.”

The good news for Nickel, anomalies don't happen twice in a row. That was evident as he upped his scoring average to 14.4 points per game and his season 3-point percentage to 44.0% before returning to the bench with a seemingly endless grin in the final moments of the game.

Vanderbilt basketball was nearly perfect on Sunday afternoon as it ran away for a 98-67 win over Wake Forest in a quad-one opportunity. How? Look at its star shooter with unbreakable confidence.

“He’s a great fit for us, he really is,” Byington said. “We know he’s a great shooter.”