Frankie Collins is no longer on the Vanderbilt basketball team, Mark Byington told reporters after a March 3 win over Ole Miss.
Collins has not played since December and has not been seen on the bench in recent games. When most recently asked about Collins, Byington declined to provide a specific update.
“Frankie has left Nashville and he’s not going to be on the team,” Byington said on March 3. “It’s going to be good for both sides of it. We wish him well. We’ll roll with the guys we’ve got.”
No. 22 Vanderbilt (23-7, 10-7 SEC) defeated Ole Miss, 89-86, in overtime, in the penultimate game of the regular season. After finishing its season against Tennessee on March 7, the Commodores will compete in the SEC tournament at Bridgestone Arena.
In a reply to a fan asking for an explanation on X, Collins said, “why? so yall can’t point the finger? It’s okay man. Just let everyone keep throwing my name in the dirt it’s okay. I’ll take all the blame for the whole situation. I won’t have any comments towards it.”
Collins had 7.8 points and 4.2 rebounds per game as the team’s top bench guard before he got injured in December. He was originally slated to return this season, but he never made it back into games despite Byington saying that he was medically cleared.
Vanderbilt was Collins’ fourth college team. He averaged 11.2 points a game in nine games at TCU during the 2024-25 season before a season-ending foot injury. Collins played two seasons at Arizona State, highlighted by averaging 13.4 points a game during the 2023-24 season.
He averaged 2.8 points a game at Michigan his freshman year during the 2021-22 season.
This move does not change Vanderbilt much on the court. The Commodores have been playing without Collins since the start of SEC play, so they were not relying on him to come back. They have still put up a solid record despite his absence.
However, it does mean that the hopes of getting a boost to the roster right before March Madness are naught. The NCAA tournament selection committee evaluates teams based on the roster they have for the tournament, so it is possible that SEC results will be weighed more heavily than Vanderbilt’s metrics-boosting blowout wins in the early season. That is unlikely to significantly affect the Commodores’ seed, though, given their solid performance in conference.
Since Collins has been out, Vanderbilt has relied on Duke Miles and Tyler Tanner to play the lion’s share of minutes at guard as the Commodores do not have a true backup guard.
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.
