Of all the ways to aptly describe the degree of difficulty in Vanderbilt’s frigid February basketball schedule – from challenging to demanding, from backbreaking to grueling, from exhausting to murderous – leave it to Commodores junior forward Tyler Nickel to come up with just the right word.
From Feb. 1 through March 1, seven of the Commodores’ nine Southeastern Conference foes were ranked in the AP Top 25 poll. Through the 86-84 win at No. 12 Texas A&M on Wednesday (Feb. 26), the Commodores (19-9, 7-8 SEC) had managed a 3-5 record, including a 1-4 road record with Saturday's home game against No. 14 Missouri yet to be waged.
“We’re battle-tested,” says Nickel, one of four double-digit scorers in Vanderbilt’s 77-72 victory over No. 24 Ole Miss Saturday at Memorial Gym.
“I mean, we just went through the roughest patch that anybody could really play in the country. So it’s huge for us to have this type of grind-it-out type of game in the second half and get that win. That’s huge for us mentally, too.
“To us, our backs are against the wall. So we had to come out fighting and swinging and just be ready to go (against Ole Miss). There’s no excuses. You’ve just got to get the job done,” adds the transfer from Virginia Tech. “We’ve had a rough stretch, true. Everybody in this league has rough stretches. Everybody’s good.”
The win over Ole Miss snapped the Commodores’ three-game skid – at home to No. 1 Auburn followed by back-to-back road losses at No. 5 Tennessee and No. 15 Kentucky.
First-year Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington’s No. 1 word for SEC basketball is “unforgiving.” He calls it the best conference in the country and points out that road victories are especially hard to come by in league play.
“Every win’s hard, difficult and important,” Byington says, “and we just went through a really tough stretch on the road where, you know … hard environments and our last home game here was against the No. 1 team in the country … we’ve been playing good basketball (but) the results haven’t quite been there.”
That’s life on the road in the SEC, especially for Vandy and its vaunted home court advantage at Memorial Gym where the Commodores have knocked off three Top 25 foes this season – Tennessee, Kentucky and Ole Miss.
“It’s (the difference between) road and home and that the crowd was great today,” Byington said after the home win over Ole Miss. “(Fans have) been supportive all year. The student section is tremendous and they lift us up in the down time and we need that.
“There’s a lot of adversity on the road and Kentucky got us. We played well enough to win (at) Tennessee. … But there’s some other times where you can do your best and the other team makes a run. Everybody’s going to have urgency in the second half (of the season).”
Following Saturday’s game against Missouri, the Commodores host struggling South Carolina and then close out the regular season at Georgia before the March 12-16 SEC Tournament at Bridgestone Arena.
Road warriors, not worriers
Byington says both he and the players are aware of all the postseason “bubble talk” by ESPN bracketologist Joe Lunardi and his CBS Sports counterpart, Jerry Palm. But awareness isn’t the same as fretting about such speculation.
“I try to stay away from it, but you can’t be naive and I understand that the message is getting through to the players,” Byington says. “I mean, I’ll walk down the street, I’m going to Starbucks, and somebody will yell at me, ‘you’re last four in.’ So, obviously, I know what they’re talking about and I usually just check it once a week,” Byington says.
“But with the guys, what we’ve talked about is there’s not bad losses in this league. You just can’t have a lot of them. Every team’s good and the wins are really special and great and you’ve got to try to find as many of them and try to stop the bleeding.
“You can’t have consecutive losses very long. The mentality that I want with our guys is, really – and we’ve talked about this – just put everything into the next game and don’t worry about anything else.
“That way we’re not worried about the past behind us or having unneeded anxiety worrying about the future because we’ve got to win as many of them as we can and then let the selection committee do their thing.”
As of Feb. 21, both Lunardi and Palm projected Vandy in their respective NCAA Tournament fields of 68. Lunardi listed the Commodores among the “last four in” and playing Wake Forest in Dayton with the winner facing UCLA in Denver in a first-round matchup.
Palm had Illinois meeting Vanderbilt in Wichita.
Both bracketologists also projected four other teams from Tennessee in their brackets – Tennessee, Lipscomb, Memphis and UT Chattanooga.
Graduate point guard Chris Mañon, a transfer from Cornell who had a team-high 16 points against Ole Miss, says he is excited by the bubble buzz about March Madness and speculation about Vandy’s postseason destination.
“Insane. A lot of crazy-looking stadiums that I have never seen but super fun,” is how Mañon describes it. “And I’m glad I get to be tested like this every time I play.”
“We can only control what we can control, obviously. I’m new to the bubble talk but it’s been fun. I hope we can continue to win down the stretch and, obviously, make the tournament.”
For Byington, the gratifying part of “bubble talk,” as he puts it, is just that the Commodores are part of the conversation. Vandy’s last NCAA Tournament appearance came after the 2016-17 season.
“It is a great thing the fact that people are talking of us in the NCAA Tournament. We were picked (No.) 16 in the league. And so you’re not anticipating us being in any kind of bubble or the bottom bubble or whatever else,” Byington says.
“And the fact that, you know, that’s being mentioned and we’ve got a chance (to continue playing). We’re playing meaningful basketball at the end of February. We’ll play meaningful basketball in March.
“That’s what you want this time of year. Some teams in this league are playing for (No. 1) seeds. Some teams are fighting to get in and everything else. It’s going to keep making us better.”
A couple of weeks ago, Byington was asked about the upcoming SEC Tournament in Nashville and how it would factor into his team’s postseason goals.
“There’s going to be teams that are going to need something in that tournament. Playing for seeding. Playing in the NCAA tournament, there is probably stuff on the line for that,” Byington said.
“I heard (ESPN analyst) Jay Bilas state that winning the SEC tournament is going to be harder than winning than a national championship. And I probably would agree with that if I had to look at it right now because the teams you’ve got to play, the style and everything else to be able to run through that, would be incredible.
“But that’s down the road. But there will be a lot on the line for different teams in the SEC tournament this year.”
Now, with the calendar about to be flipped, welcome to March Madness in the SEC.