How Mark Byington's Pregame Speech Rang True In Vanderbilt Basketball's Auburn Win – Sports Illustrated

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As the gym got quiet and Vanderbilt’s players gathered around midcourt at Auburn’s Neville Arena, Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington made a declaration. And he meant it. 
“I know you guys are ready to play,” Byington told the team. “I can tell you guys are ready to play.” 
The declaration came after two and a half days of prep that Byington’s Vanderbilt team hoped to use to flush what happened to it in its Saturday loss to Oklahoma–in which it went down by as much as 21 and suffered what was a quad three loss at the time. 
That Saturday performance was entirely uncharacteristic of this Vanderbilt team–which Byington indicated was unprepared for Porter Moser’s team that day–and it paid with a loss. Byington’s team vowed to never let something like that happen again. It knew that it couldn’t. Not with everything that it believes it has ahead of it hanging in the balance. 
Perhaps that was the difference as Vanderbilt went to Auburn’s Neville Arena and stole one to pick up its first win in the jungle since 2016. 
“You gotta show something after the way we played last time if you’re really who we think we are,” Byington said in his postgame radio hit. “I’m upset the way we played and the guys are. They’re prideful and they care, they care about winning, they care about Vanderbilt.” 
This Vanderbilt team demonstrated that Byington was right to believe in it as it fought off every Auburn punch that came its way on Tuesday night. Perhaps the Tigers would’ve wrestled it away from this Vanderbilt team down the stretch had this been a 47-minute game rather than a traditional one, but that wasn’t the case. 
Instead, Vanderbilt held its ground every time Auburn threw a punch. When it needed some late-clock heroics, it got them from Tyler Tanner twice. When it wasn’t Tanner making a timely shot to swing the game, it was AK Okereke doing it in the corner with a 3-point make that effectively served as the dagger to give Vanderbilt’s its second-consecutive 20-win season for the first time since 2012. 
It all appeared to be stacked against this Vanderbilt team as it went into the Jungle without Duke Miles or Frankie Collins, its bigs were seemingly all on a short leash because of foul trouble and it lacked momentum coming out of Saturday. There it was walking off the floor chomping at the bit in anticipation of its victory milkshakes when this was all said and done, though. 
“What a response,” Byington said to open his postgame comments. “I thought that our guys just had their minds made up that they weren’t leaving here without a win and we looked like that on Sunday, Monday and carried it over to today. We just had an intensity about us.” 
Why? Not because the group that Byington has to work with these days is more talented than Pearl’s or because this group finally got Duke Miles and Frankie Collins back from injury. Not because it caught Auburn sleeping or put together a stunning performance from 3-point range, either. 
This was more about Vanderbilt answering the call every time it appeared that Auburn would throw a game-changing punch at it. This was about Vanderbilt making a conscious decision that it wasn’t going to let what happened on Saturday define it or what’s going to happen for it the rest of the way. This was Vanderbilt making a statement that it’s still who it says it is, despite what happened on the floor at Memorial Gymnasium. 
“To come back from not playing well a couple days ago only a few days after and to show the type of team we are,” Byington said, “We battled adversity in so many different ways.”
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.
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