How Mark Byington Evaluates Vanderbilt Basketball's Defense After Kentucky Loss – Sports Illustrated

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LEXINGTON, KY—The visual should be ingrained in the heads of Vanderbilt players by now. It has to be, right? Right? 
There’s Kentucky guard Otega Oweh pushing it, getting out in transition and gliding downhill for a relatively open layup. It happened enough times on Saturday afternoon to where this group is going to have to watch it back over and over again when it gets back to Nashville and Mark Byington puts his players in the film room. 
The outing was emblematic of everything that went wrong for this group on the defensive end on Saturday. It allowed Kentucky to get out in transition too often. It allowed Kentucky’s best players to play to their strengths instead of left handed. 
“Not paying attention to the details in the first half,” Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington said in regard to where things went wrong. “There was scouting report mistakes, there were personal details. As a coaching staff, and we got to figure out a way to do better.”
The admission was admirable, but it was merely Byington stating the obvious in some ways. Kentucky shot it 58.8% from the field, 50% from 3-point range, got to the free throw line 20 times and scored 17 points off of turnovers. This was Kentucky’s third-highest scoring game of the season. 
Vanderbilt got burned by Kentucky guards Collin Chandler and Denzel Aberdeen as Chandler went for 23 points on 10 shots and Aberdeen went for 15 points on 10 shots. Perhaps the biggest indicator that Vanderbilt overlooked some things defensively was that Oweh went for 23 points without making a shot from 3-point range after Vanderbilt held him to an inefficient performance in Nashville. 
Oweh was the beneficiary of a few runouts and pick sixes that made Vanderbilt’s defense. That’s why this was so discouraging as a whole for this Vanderbilt team. 
“A lot of times it wasn't just our defense,” Byington said. “Sometimes it was dumb offense and that hurt our defense. 
Bad shots or turned them all over. And this place gets loud when you do that.”
What made Vanderbilt so successful in its January win over Kentucky was its ability to force Kentucky to beat it in the half court. Byington’s team turned Kentucky over 15 times, held it to 32.2% shooting from the field, 25.0% shooting from 3-point range and just eight assists that night. Kentucky’s 55 points marked the program’s lowest scoring output since Jan. 2023 when it went for 55 against then-No. 1 Alabama. 
This wasn’t that, though. 
This is what the quintessential Vanderbilt vs. Kentucky matchup at Rupp Arena would’ve produced semi-often over the past half decade or so. This was a Kentucky team completely overmatching a Vanderbilt team. The difference here; this should never have happened. Vanderbilt was a 1.5-point underdog on Saturday and has aspirations of making a real push down the stretch here. 
It appears as if its defense isn’t a long-term issue as much as this is an isolated incident that includes a general lack of focus as well as a few ill-advised fouls. Vanderbilt is No. 4 in the SEC in defensive efficiency, No. 7 in opponent effective field goal percentage and No. 1 in opponent turnover percentage. 
Time for that defense to return on Wednesday. There were flashes of it on Saturday, but Vanderbilt needs to return to form. 
“There were some glimmers of hope,” Byington said. “But you can’t give up 91 points.”
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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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