Vanderbilt Basketball is Impressive. Now, it's Got a Chance to Prove Itself in Most Grueling Week Yet.
In this story:
NASHVILLE—-There’s still no book on this Vanderbilt basketball team.
16 college basketball staffs have done the scouting report and have tried to find a glaring weakness that they can exploit, yet none of them have done it. They’ve tried to slow Vanderbilt down and its half court offense has proven to be good enough for that to be okay. Some of them have tried to muck up games, but Vanderbilt eventually just gets back to its brand of basketball. Its frontcourt is still relatively untested, but at some point its ability to be good enough to win 16 games means more than its perceived shortcomings.
Even with all the hours that have been accumulated by programs trying to find deficiencies, none of them have resulted in their teams finding a way to take down Vanderbilt. Only two programs have come within single digits.
More than it’s been a full-fledged train of domination, it’s been a demonstrative demonstration of sustainability and longevity for this Vanderbilt program. There’s still yet to be a stereotypical matchup that this team should be hoping to avoid in the NCAA Tournament. That’s not the case for most teams in the country.
That’s the good news for Vanderbilt as it currently sits. The news that ought to make it flee from complacency pertains to the idea that it’s only played about half its schedule and that the tests are going to continue to come. Need an example? Look at this week.
Vanderbilt opens the week by getting its biggest road test to date in a matchup with Sean Miller’s Texas team. Texas could expose Vanderbilt’s vulnerability that comes with its issues with foul trouble and could wear it down that way and with its elite offensive rebounding ability. Vanderbilt will likely score enough to win, but its toughness and ability to stay available will be tested.
Whether it gets through that grinder or not, it’ll have to get its boxing gloves on again as it takes on the defending national champions and perhaps the best frontcourt in the nation on Saturday. Florida–on the surface–is strong in areas in which Vanderbilt could be weak, although Vanderbilt’s guardplay is significantly better.
Time for it to buckle up and roll with the changes.
"Every game just has its own identity,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said on Saturday. "But I do know this: you look too far ahead in this league, you get so anxious, you might not want to coach anymore and play anymore. Like, it's a gauntlet. It is a challenge, every one of them. So I know it’s coach speak, but it's just what's next one at a time. And then do the best you can and then try to bounce back or recover or do whatever you got to do for the next one.”
Byington is self aware to admit that his comments sound like coach speak, but he’s got the mentality that this program has to have as it faces the stretch ahead. Vanderbilt knows the position it’s in, it knows that it’s one win away from setting the program record for the most-consecutive wins to start a season.
Most of Byington’s players–which make up the 10th-most experienced team in college basketball–have been around long enough to know that if they put stock into that, they’ll receive a reality check and come back to earth on Wednesday night. When the column that accounts for the chances of an undefeated season–which KenPom has at 1.2%--still shows up on the bottom of a KenPom profile in mid January, it indicates that a mental battle comes along with the physical one.
It’s a problem that few teams have to deal with–just five in college basketball these days–but it’s one that this Vanderbilt team gets the privilege of dealing with. It hasn’t tightened up from the pressure that hangs over its head yet, but it has to stay loose if this is going to continue. That also applies to its physical state after it wore down in stretches of Saturday’s second half against LSU.
If Vanderbilt can achieve that, it appears to have a greater chance than the 48.91% hopes that KenPom gives it to stay undefeated after this week is over. The KenPom-calculated chances of it staying undefeated through the next three games is just 30.81%. Improbability hasn’t stopped Vanderbilt as it’s fulfilled the less-than 8% chance that it would still be undefeated at this point, though. Don’t expect it to buy into percentages now.
“Coach [Byington] always tells us ‘don't get caught up in praise or hate, because both of them are poisoned,’” Vanderbilt guard Tyler Tanner told Vandy on SI. “Either they're praising you so they can want you to fall down or they're hating on you for you to stay down.”
Time for this group to see how far it can take its level-headed approach.
_(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