Exclusive: Tyler Tanner Returns "Home" To Vanderbilt Basketball With High Expectations – Sports Illustrated

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NASHVILLE—Like any other college basketball player in 2026, Tyler Tanner understands the transfer portal and why it would appeal to the modern college basketball player. He’s not judgemental towards players that opt to move on. He gets it.
Tanner never felt as if that route was the best one for him, though. 
Anything but a career at Vanderbilt wasn’t ever going to be in the cards for Tanner, and he knows that. He was a three-star local prospect that other power-five programs rarely looked at. He stayed through a coaching change. He’s the last remaining Vanderbilt player from the team his freshman season. 
Tanner was never closed off to the idea of leaving Vanderbilt for the NBA, but he says he was never leaving for another program. He says he wasn’t even considering that. 
He says this program means too much to him. Those who make it up mean too much to him. The idea that his family can come around every time Vanderbilt has a game at Memorial Gymnasium isn’t lost on him, either. As a result, he wasn’t all that upset that it made more sense for him to return to school than it did for him to stay in the NBA Draft. 
“Vanderbilt is just kind of my home for college basketball,” Tanner told Vandy on SI. “Even if Vanderbilt was a little further away and I was still playing for the same staff, it would still be home. I love the fact that like my friends and family can come to games and I can see them and they can support me in person because it just takes all the weight off of you and all the pressure of you is kind of just like you got such a good support system around you that you can rely on interest so it definitely makes it for a better experience.” 
Tanner remembers a number of people around him asking him whether he’d consider the portal, but he says he told him there was no way he would leave Vanderbilt because of the atmosphere and the way its staff believed in him when he was an unhearalded recruit. He says he wouldn’t try it for the world. 
As a result, Tanner is the face of this program in the Mark Byington era. Byington called Tanner the future of the program before Tanner’s freshman season started, trusted him to play important minutes as a freshman and watched as Tanner broke out as a sophomore. 
Tanner is one of just two returning All-SEC First-Team players and is one of a handful of total all league guys to come back for another year of school. The consensus in Tanner’s camp is that he was doing everything he could in order to chase down a guarantee from a team that he would land in the first round of the draft, but the thought of what another year playing for Byington could be like was enough for him to quickly flush any disappointment that he had in favor of excitement. 
“The ability to play basketball is such a blessing, especially at Vanderbilt where you can play the SEC and and play with the staff that you love being around and players that you love being around is a huge blessing,” Tanner said. “It’s a huge blessing to be able to come back and play here, make a name for this team that we have and just continue to improve this year and try to take another shot at it next year.”
Tanner started to build his Vanderbilt legacy as he led the program to its most successful season in a number of years in 2025-26 and put it within inches of the second weekend of the tournament, but the consensus is that the team that Tanner is coming back to is the one with the best chance of any that Tanner has been on to reach the Sweet 16. 
If all goes to plan, Tanner will be one of only two players in program history to play at Vanderbilt for three seasons while making the NCAA Tournament in each one. The only other one is former first-round draft pick John Jenkins. Tanner would also end his career as one of just 11 first round picks in this program’s history. 
Tanner is a commodity like few others that this program has rostered over the years, and he appears to know what’s possible as a result of his return. 
“We all have very high expectations for this year because each year since me and Coach have been here we’ve kinda built and improved and gotten better each year so I think this year will be another step up,” Tanner said. “We got a really really good squad that coach recruited and brought in as well as three returners with me, Chandler Bing and Jayden Leverett. So we’ve got that core. We got some young guys, but some guys that have experienced real SEC basketball and a lot of guys who are obviously super talented, but also really unselfish and really good guys. When coach builds teams like that, it makes it easy to be more successful and like I said, we definitely have some high expectations for this team.”
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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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