Mark Byington Handing the Keys Off to Returning Core

BIRMINGHAM, AL—Before Mark Byington mentioned any of his highly-touted transfer class, short career selling insurance, revenue sharing and his team’s improved size, he had a group of three to shout out. 

Tyler Nickel, Tyler Tanner and Devin McGlockton weren’t in the room when Byington addressed the media, but they’ve likely heard the message he delivered multiple times by now. If they haven’t, it shouldn’t be surprising to them. 

For Vanderbilt to have the level of confidence it’s got at this stage of Byington’s build, those three players have had to believe in his mission and the way he’s trying to build this thing. None of the three of them were selected to the SEC’s all-league teams, but Byington isn’t underrating their value. 

“Having them back gives us a big step forward compared to where we were a year ago,” Byington said. “The players that are coming back for us were a priority, not transfers or anything else. The reason they were priority one was they’re unbelievable people, they’re very talented basketball players, but they care about winning and I don’t think that’s everybody right now.” 

Byington says McGlockton and Nickel have an opportunity to be among the best players in the SEC while Tanner is in line for a significant second-year leap. In the second-year head coach’s eyes, his three returners are among his best players and are his building blocks. 

The message would be futile if Byington was the only one preaching it, but this group of Vanderbilt returners wants to be known for its loyalty, leadership and ability to lead this thing in the right direction. 

“We still take pride in that,” McGlockton told VandyonSI. “It's huge nowadays and staying with the program, so just being in the program, knowing the system, I feel like we're gonna have advantage over different teams that have completely different rosters like new rosters.”

Vanderbilt didn’t have that advantage this time a year ago as it retrained just one scholarship player in JaQualon Roberts, who didn’t take on a big role throughout his lone season with Byington before transferring out of Vanderbilt’s program. Vanderbilt lauds its improved size and depth ahead of Byington’s second season, but perhaps the biggest reason it was selected 11th in the league’s preseason poll rather than 16th is because of the three players that represented it on Tuesday in Birmingham. 

A year after Nickel and Vanderbilt guard AJ Hoggard had to walk around representing a program that they didn’t know all that much about, Vanderbilt’s core of returners walked around as if they’d known each other for years. Tanner did it with a Team USA backpack on, McGlockton did it with a quiet confidence and Nickel did it with the confidence that seemingly only he has. 

Some of that is just who Nickel is, some of it comes as a result of “real deal killas” that he believes can take Vanderbilt to the tournament for the second-consecutive season. 

“It’s huge,” Nickel said of the three returners leading the charge. “I think we kind of set the tone for the culture for a lot of guys coming in. and all these guys to their credit, I mean, super receptive of it. So, having us set the tone and all these other guys with their abilities and talents coming around, it all complements each other.”

Who knows how far this Vanderbilt team goes, if it improves on the progress it made in year one under Byington. What it knows is that it’ll go as far as its core of returners do, though. 

That’s how Byington believes you win in this age of college basketball. Now he and Vanderbilt’s core are looking to test his theory. 

“I think it's pretty important with the portal now,” Tanner said of having a core. “There's so many new guys that are going to come in each and every year. 
So I think having a cultural group that people can stand on is important.”