Time For Vanderbilt Basketball to Make its Run; Column – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE—Mark Byington wrapped up his huddle a few feet right of the free throw line and turned his back as if he didn’t have to white knuckle this anymore. The group rising up from the little black stools indicated to him that he didn’t anymore. 
There they were; Tyler Tanner, Duke Miles, Tyler Nickel, Devin McGlockton and Jalen Washington. No reserves playing in unfamiliar roles. No sense of Tanner having to do everything or a role player having to play like a star for this group to win. For so long, Mark Byington and all of his staff members have been longing for something like this. 
This isn’t perfect–it’s almost assuredly not going to get Frankie Collins and Mason Nicholson back–but it’s as close as this group has been since the start of the new year. Everyone has a defined, fitting role. Miles is healthy and not fighting through significant pain. Tanner appears to be over his sickness and back to his normal self. 
“You want to be at your best,” Byington said. “I thought tonight, I thought we were close to really getting it going, and we're going to have to be playing our best basketball.” 
Here’s Vanderbilt’s roster that it’s going to be working with the rest of the way. Here’s the group that’s going to determine if this is just a good Vanderbilt team or if it can be the greatest team in program history. The program wins record is still within reach. So is a top four seed and the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. It’s on this group to go and take it. 
No more paused evaluation because of external factors. Time to figure out how good this group really is. Time to figure out what they can realistically accomplish. 
“Now that we kind of have our guys, when we was at our peak back, it feels good,” Vanderbilt wing Tyler Nickel told Vandy on SI. “I mean, just the more that we play together again and get our rhythm back and everything. We kind of got our rhythm back a little bit today, but it's just going to get better and better from here on now.”
If Wednesday is an indicator…well, we still don’t quite know how good this group actually is. This group is back to its on-paper form, but it hasn’t been at its best since it went on the road and won at Mississippi State. It wasn’t on Wednesday. 
The in-rhythm shots from 3-point range were plentiful, the matchup was favorable and Vanderbilt won 88-80. It didn’t do it all that convincingly, though. Vanderbilt led by as much as 20, but let Georgia back into the game and looked to be staring down its third-consecutive loss for a few minutes. The feel didn’t end in Georgia leaving Memorial Gymnasium with a win, but it never made anyone feel warm and fuzzy in the reality that Vanderbilt is going to really make a push here. 
Wednesday was good enough to feel good about this Vanderbilt team. It wasn’t great enough to feel great, though. That’s how the entire body of work feels at this point. Vanderbilt looked every bit of elite throughout non-league play. It has a few big SEC wins on the rèsumè. It’s also got a few losses that really make you question if this group has the consistency needed to avoid throwing out a stinker and to make it out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament. 
“We got out there and we kind of took our foot off the pedal a little bit,” Vanderbilt forward AK Okereke told Vandy on SI. “We ended up getting a win. A win is a win at the end of the day, especially in SEC play, but we definitely could be a lot better, so looking to improving going into the next few games.”
Improvement lies ahead for this Vanderbilt team, it hopes, but Wednesday was about this group avoiding plenty of things down the line. You could kiss the top four seed in the NCAA Tournament, double bye in the SEC Tournament and the program wins record goodbye if this had gone haywire. 
Georgia nearly represented a quad one opportunity, but this shouldn’t have been a game that Vanderbilt lost. Vanderbilt is better than Georgia at Georgia’s own game. It’s got to capitalize on an opportunity like that, particularly at home. 
Vanderbilt should’ve won that game, and it did. That keeps everything on the table. That means that if this group gets it going like it thinks it’s capable of getting it going, it’s got a chance to really take advantage of it. This was about opening up the rest of the possibilities if this group can figure it out and figure out how to get back to where it has always believed it can go. 
Time to keep trending up. Time to see if it can beat Kentucky, Tennessee and Ole Miss on the road. Time to go on the road believing it can do it outside the confines of Memorial Gymnasium. Time to do the same thing when it matters the most and make this a historically good season rather than just a good one. 
“We’re just going to continue representing the fans and representing Vanderbilt as we go on to the SEC Tournament,” Vanderbilt forward Devin McGlockton said, “And the tournament, we’re gonna keep representing Vanderbilt like we’ve been all season.”
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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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