Exclusive: Where Tyler Tanner Believes He Can Improve Heading Into Junior Season For Vanderbilt Basketball – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE—-Buried within Tyler Tanner’s noteworthy comments ahead of the NBA Combine in regard to the decision he had in front of him was perhaps the most important one, and it had nothing to do with the NBA Draft process.
Tanner slipped the line in there, but he appeared to mean it. He said at the time that he was a better player than the last time people saw him, in Vanderbilt’s Round of 32 loss to Nebraska. 
Perhaps the comment was mere agent speak that Tanner was passing along to the national media, but it likely had significantly more to do with the belief Tanner had in the way his game had evolved as a result of his time working out with other NBA Draft hopefuls in California after the season ended. 
The workouts were difficult and Tanner was away from his family, but they worked to prepare him for the Combine and the individual workouts with teams he’d be conducting between his time in Chicago and the May 27 deadline to make a stay-go decision. 
Tanner’s team-specific workouts were best described by a sequence in which other, bigger prospects were trying to use their physicality to take Tanner to the rim on straight-line drives. That didn’t define the day for Tanner, though. 
“Most guys, when they see a smaller person guarding them, the first thing they’re gonna try to do is just put their head down and go,” Tanner’s trainer Spencer Richardson said. “If you play with the basketball in front of Ty, he’s gonna take it from you. Kudos to them for understanding that they can’t try all their moves on him, they were just kind of going hard right and left and going over the top. At the same time, none of those could stay in front of him. None of them.” 
Tanner says that NBA teams weren’t worried about his offensive ability after a breakout sophomore season, in which he averaged 19.5 points, 5.1 assists and 3.6 rebounds per game while shooting 48.5% from the field as well as 36.8% from 3-point range. He was Vanderbilt’s leading scorer and was No. 10 in KenPom’s National Player of The Year rankings. 
The season was good enough to get Tanner on NBA Draft radar, but his frame was a significant talking point during his pre-draft process and will continue to be. Tanner knows he can’t control his height, but he’s set on doing whatever he can this offseason in order to ease the minds of NBA evaluators. 
“I think the majority of it will be putting some weight on, which I'm already working on now,” Tanner told Vandy on SI in regard to his offseason goals. “I still think there's a lot that I can improve on I know last year it was a great year from you my team, but I still think there's a lot of stuff in my game that I can get better at and that's why that's what this year is gonna be before just finding finding those holes in my game and try improving everywhere I can.” 
The trajectory to change NBA decision makers’ minds in regard to his defense is a difficult one that Tanner has ahead of him, particularly because of the abstract nature of what he’ll have to improve. Tanner was named to the SEC’s First-Team All-Defense in 2025-26 and was No. 32 in steal rate. By all accounts, he was among the best defensive guards in the country at the point of attack. 
As Tanner has learned, though, it’s not as much about that as it is about how projectable his defensive skillset is to NBA evaluators. 
Tanner struggled to guard Arkansas star guard Darius Acuff in the SEC Championship game and was among the guards that guarded former Tennessee guard Ja’Kobi Gillespie at the NBA Combine when he went for 28 points. Other than that, though, Tanner’s defense has generally been perceived as a positive. He’s still got a narrative to fight, though. 
“Obviously I'm short and that's why they think I'm I'm not a good defender,” Tanner said, “And that's why they think I kindergarten switches but like I'm confident in my defense I think I think I can guard the ball well, but I just have to do a better job this year being able to show that guarding bigger guys and holding my ground.” 
Tanner says the major areas that evaluators told him they wanted to see improvements in are his defense and frame, but he also believes that he can become a more dynamic all-around piece by improving other pieces of his game heading into year three at Vanderbilt. 
Tanner shot 34.1% from 3-point range in league play last season after a dismal shooting year as a freshman. It’s not as if he hasn’t proven that he can be an effective shooter, but if he can take a leap next season it will solidify to NBA people that he’s a capable shooter at that level. If Tanner can get to his floater and make them more consistently in 2026-27, he’s got a chance to be one of the most dynamic offensive players in the country. 
Richardson says that he and Tanner will hone in on making sure that he’s an improved shooter off the catch, step up and in terms of the long ball as a whole in 2026-27. Tanner says he’s dedicated to improving as a shooter, although teams weren’t all that worried about his shooting acumen. Richardson also says that he plans to push Tanner to become more of a leader than he was a season ago. 
In the end, though, Richardson and Tanner’s camp as a whole believes he could’ve been drafted in the first round of the 2026 NBA Draft. They feel as if he can improve his stock by developing, but also that searching for parts of his game to improve feels nitpicky. 
“He doesn’t have to take major jumps,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington told Vandy on SI earlier in the summer. “He could play in the NBA next year. I think he’ll be more prepared to be in the NBA after another year with us.”
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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, Basket Under Review and Mainstreet Nashville.
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