Vanderbilt Men’s Basketball (15-3, 3-2) got its signature win on Jan. 18, taking down the No. 6 Tennessee Volunteers 76-75 behind a rowdy Memorial Gymnasium home crowd. The fans’ storming of the court after the win was special, but the Commodores’ performance in this one simply cannot be overlooked.
Head coach Mark Byington did what former head coaches Bryce Drew and Jerry Stackhouse struggled to do throughout multi-year tenures: He beat the Volunteers. The Commodores used an impressive team-wide effort and a blazing-hot shooting performance to sink their in-state rivals.
If there was ever any doubt that Vanderbilt’s players — most of them coming from other programs — would get up for a big rivalry game against Tennessee, it was squashed on Saturday.
“We don’t like orange,” Jaylen Carey said after the game.
This was a complete team performance. Carey and Edwards will get a lot of credit for their games, but every single player who touched the court played a serious role in upsetting the Volunteers.
Let’s talk about it.
Shots…fell?
Vanderbilt just showed the SEC what it’s capable of when it hits its shots. Byington brought in a team full of shooters this offseason, but those shooters struggled through four games of conference play as Vanderbilt converted on just 27.5% of 3-pointers before the Tennessee game.
Tyler Nickel — the best catch-and-shoot player on the team — had an especially long cold streak leading into the clash with Tennessee. He went 0-for-4 and 2-for-8 against South Carolina and Mississippi State, respectively. That all changed against the Volunteers, as the flame-throwing junior went 4-of-7 from downtown, including a ridiculous and-1 finish to end the first half.
Edwards was great from deep as well, hitting on 3-of-6 attempts. As a team, Vanderbilt went 8-of-21 from downtown and showed that when its shots are falling, it can hang with the best of them.
Jaylen Carey is going to be a difference-maker
Vanderbilt has played this entire season undersized in the absence of Kijani Wright, but that didn’t matter against Tennessee. Carey showed why he was such a big get for Byington and Co., pouring in 14 points and nabbing 10 rebounds to go with it.
He’s taken some time to get going and has oftentimes looked a little too “raw” to spend extended time on the court, but in every game, he looks more and more composed. The layups that he frequently missed against Mississippi State and South Carolina found their way to the bottom of the net against Tennessee. He made Igor Milicic Jr. and Felix Okpara (both three inches taller than him) look small.
“[Carey is] nineteen years old,” Byington said. “He’s going to get better and better.”
Shoutout to the students
If there was ever such a thing as a gutsy performance from a student section, Vanderbilt’s classes of 2025 through 2028 produced that on Saturday. Tennessee fans — as has become par for the course in games between these two teams — completely raided Memorial Gymnasium and were, to put it mildly, loud.
The students did an amazing job neutralizing a hostile visiting crowd. There were stretches during the late first and early second half when Tennessee fans were quiet, and the only noise in the arena came from the students.
Perhaps the noise coming from the student section is what caused Chaz Lanier to miss his second free throw late in the game. Vanderbilt very rarely enjoys home-court advantage, and it’s going to take a lot to keep opposing fans out of the building, but props to the students for showing out.
Byington’s signature win
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Byington is a perfect coach for Vanderbilt. He’s done an unbelievable job over the past nine months since joining the program in recruiting players, bonding them and teaching them how to play his style of basketball.
“We tried to find competitive guys,” Byington said. “They had to make winning number one right now in the NIL days.”
Vanderbilt has had some games when it failed to knock down shots or felt smaller in the paint, but this game proved that Byington is one of the premier coaches in the SEC and the nation. His timeout when the score was 19-11, and Tennessee had all the momentum completely changed the course of the game. The Commodores came out of that game looking refreshed on defense, composed on offense and rode a 30-16 run into halftime.
The players deserve a lot of respect for their incredible performance in this game, but Byington needs his praise, too. He has completely turned this program around in his short time in Nashville — it’s completely unrecognizable from the state it was in under Stackhouse a year ago.
“We used to pray for times like this,” Edwards said after the game.
Edwards said that he and his team participated in the field-storming after Vanderbilt Football. Apparently, they huddled up after the game and said that they wanted to create a similar moment for fans in Memorial Gymnasium.
Safe to say they delivered?
Vanderbilt will be back in action against Alabama on Tuesday, Jan. 21 at 6:00 p.m. CST.