The biggest challenge on the biggest stage. That was the immense task Mark Byington accepted in late March when Vanderbilt hired the Virginia native as the new Commodore basketball coach.

Byington, 48, successfully rebuilt struggling basketball programs at mid-major powers Georgia Southern and James Madison, but now he’s being asked to revive a tradition-rich Southeastern Conference basketball program that has been to the NCAA Tournament 15 times but since 2017.

He replaces Jerry Stackhouse, who twice got the Commodores to the National Invitation Tournament but struggled to a 9-23 record (4-14 SEC) in his final season. Meanwhile, Byington’s James Madison team steamrolled to an impressive 32-4 record last season and knocked off fifth-seeded Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA Tournament.

Byington embraces the challenge of taking the Commodores back to the NCAA Tournament and turning the program from an SEC pretender to SEC contender every year.

First-year head coach Mark Byington has a tall task ahead in getting his transfer-heavy team ready for the rigorous Southeastern Conference schedule.

-- Photo By Matthew Maxey | Icon Sportswire

“The SEC is the best basketball league out there besides the NBA,” Byington told the Ledger just days before the start of the 2024-25 season. “Every team’s committed, every team has talented players and great coaches.

“If you want to go against the best, you want to be in the SEC. If you love challenges, you want to be in the SEC. And I want to do both of those things.”

The Byington era opened Monday night with a 102-63 win against Maryland Eastern Shore, and the Commodores return to action Sunday against Southeast Missouri. Byington says he hopes Vanderbilt fans will accompany him on the journey, much in the same way ardent supporters have embraced Clark Lea’s football turnaround. The surprising Commodores reached The Associated Press Top 25 after league wins over top-ranked Alabama and Kentucky.

Miles Keeffe is one of five players returning from last season.

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Memorial Gym attendance dwindled to an average of 6,786 last season, but Byington says that will change. He’s been out among fans, seeking their support for the rebuilt team that boasts 10 transfers in this era of the transfer portal and players receiving financial compensation.

“The biggest thing I expect from fans is to come along on the journey with us,” he says. “Where this program is now is not where it’s going to be. Where this team is now is not where this team’s going to be. This team is going to get better and better.

“I’ve worked extremely hard about getting out in the community … and the reception has been great. It’s a hungry fan base.

“There’s been some excitement with the football team, and I think the fans and the alumni really want Vanderbilt to be good. And then, Nashville really wants us to be good. So the support I’ve been getting has been great.”

Byington delivered that same message at the SEC Tipoff media gathering last month in Hoover, Alabama.

‘Without the transfer portal, we wouldn’t have a roster right now,” Byington says.

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“The reason I’m at Vanderbilt and in this league is because it’s the best,” said Byington, who was accompanied by two of the transfer players, graduate AJ Hoggard (Michigan State) and junior Tyler Nickel (Virginia Tech). “There’s challenges, and it’s the best coaches, environments, and I want to be a part of that.

“Right now we’re trying to build Vanderbilt to be one of the better teams in the SEC and also the country. … It’s something we’re excited about. And we don’t run from challenges. I don’t and I’m trying to find guys on my team (who are) very similar.”

Newbies must bond quickly

Vanderbilt looks like a veteran squad with five graduate players, one senior and six juniors. That kind of roster that usually has coaches and fans alike salivating with lofty expectations. But in the ever-changing world of college athletics, appearances can be quite deceiving.

Jason Edwards was a first-team all-conference selection last season at North Texas.

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“One of the things I looked at when I took the job, I just decided I didn’t want to be young in the SEC in year one. Young guys in college athletics is tough,” Byington says. “I mean, there’s still the extra COVID year. There’s grown men out there playing that are 23, 24 years old, and I didn’t want to go out there with a bunch of 18-year-olds.

“It’s going to change now. The COVID year is going away, and high school recruiting is going to come back more, but at the same time it’s a philosophy of ours to get old as fast as possible.”

Hoggard and Nickel say the team bonded during offseason workouts and bought into Byington’s system and philosophy and their own prior college basketball experiences.

“It’s coming together really well. In the summer, usually a lot of teams do a lot of individual workouts or just not a whole lot of team-centric things,” says Nickel, who scored a career-high 24 points for Virginia Tech against Clemson last season.

“We’re playing with each other, getting a feel for what one another does at a high level. What each other wants to do. We’ve gelled faster than a lot of people assumed we would. But that’s how Coach set up the offseason.”

Hoggard, who spent four years playing in the Big Ten for Michigan State, says the opportunity to play in the SEC was a huge selling point in his decision to join Byington at Vandy.

“The change in conference is big, and they change the style of play,” he says. “The SEC plays way differently than the Big Ten. Get the whole change there. Getting to put my game on a different pedestal, getting to play in the SEC every night with the top players in the country. Top teams. Majority of the teams in the top 25 are in the SEC, so the opportunity to play and battle every night is one of the reasons as well.”

Embracing a new era

Following the struggles of the 2023 football season, football coach Clark Lea and administrators agreed that the only way to truly rebuild his program was for the SEC’s only private school was to fully embrace name, image and likeness (NIL) and the transfer portal. Those new players helped lead Vandy to a 6-3 record after Saturday’s win at Auburn, ensuring bowl eligibility for the first time since 2018.

Byington says the changing landscape is “the nature of college athletics right now. So you can’t fight it. You’ve got to embrace it. And without the transfer portal, we wouldn’t have a roster right now.

“And, right now, college athletics – and I could talk particularly in basketball, it’s different than ever it’s been. So you are going to have transfers. You do need a strong NIL (compensation program), especially competing in the SEC.

“And all those things play into the fact (that) we’ve got a great product to sell with Nashville and Vanderbilt’s education and some history (of a winning program),” he says. “We have that, but we need more than that. And that’s where these other things are coming into play.

“It is the biggest challenge, roster turnover and new teams. Not a lot of teams are going through that,” Byington says. “I think we’re the extreme, with the amount of new players and the lack of familiarity with them, with each other and everything else.”

The experienced roster could help the Commodores make a splash in Byington’s first season. But this is the SEC, and the 16-team league got even stronger with the addition of Texas and Oklahoma. The Commodores were picked to finish last in the preseason SEC media poll.

“If we’ve got to take on an underdog role and prove-people-wrong role, that’s great, we’ll adjust to that,” Byington says. “But at the same time, it’s not something that we were going to get caught up in. Whatever number somebody else thinks we are, that’s going to be a weakness, so we’re going to try to focus on who we are and be the best we can be.”