Mark Byington on Vanderbilt basketball team bonding with transfers
Vanderbilt basketball is mostly new players in 2024-25. Here’s how they bonded under new coach Mark Byington.
When Mark Byington arrived at Vanderbilt, there wasn’t a single game contract signed for 2025. That left the new Commodores basketball coach to put together a full, competitive schedule on his own.
Byington took guidance from the SEC, which gives its teams scheduling suggestions to try to boost their NET as high as possible. The result was a slate of mostly Quadrant 4 home games, with several road or neutral-site games against Power Four opponents, including a matchup with TCU in Fort Worth, Texas, a road game against Virginia Tech in the ACC/SEC Challenge, and facing off with Nevada and others in the Charleston Classic tournament in South Carolina.
Byington was mostly happy with the results. But if there was one thing he could’ve done differently, it would have been to have one more Quadrant 1 game.
“Everybody’s particular,” he said Tuesday. “And you know, certain teams don’t want to come play on the road. And that’s what we struggle trying to find maybe another Quad 1 team, but we wanted to be here in Nashville.”
Vanderbilt had its first official practice Tuesday. Twelve of the 13 scholarship players are new to the program, with 10 transfers and two freshmen joining the lone holdover, JQ Roberts. Only sophomore forward Jaylen Carey has played for Byington, as he followed his coach from James Madison.
To combat that, Byington said the Commodores spent time doing team-building activities away from basketball.
He plans to play a fast-paced style of basketball where players can switch between several different positions.
“Our tempo will be one of the tops in the country,” he said.
While the majority of the offseason was spent working on offensive installs, Byington said the preseason practices will be on 70% defense until the opener on Nov. 4 against Maryland Eastern Shore.
After five years under Jerry Stackhouse as coach, a new era of Vanderbilt basketball is soon to begin.
ESTES Mark Byington has spent bleary-eyed month building a new Vanderbilt basketball team
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X, formerly Twitter, @aria_gerson.
