Mark Byington addresses need to prepare for Tennessee fans at Vanderbilt game

On Saturday, Vanderbilt defeated Tennessee for just the second time in the two teams’ last 14 meetings. Moreover, they did so in front of the first sellout crowd at Memorial Gym since 2019.

Naturally, with the game being an in-state rivalry, not every fan in the arena was rooting for the Commodores. Vanderbilt head coach Mark Byington expected this and prepared his players for it before the game.

“You had some advice from different people and what I didn’t want is, I didn’t want Tennessee to make a shot and then they hear noise and our guys getting disappointed,” Byington said. “The No. 1 thing we said, ‘We worry about us and we take care of us.’ And I was like, we’re going to have support in there. But we had to almost anticipate — it’s like a neutral environment where it’s going be crowds cheering on both sides.

“It was a great environment. It was fun for, I’m sure they would say the same thing, fun environment. I like to get to every single time we play them where there’s less and less orange in there. Wins help and we got to build it that way. But today our crowd lifted us up and supported us.”

If Byington and his Commodores can keep up their current momentum, they can expect Vanderbilt fans to keep coming back for more. Vanderbilt is 15-3 this season and 3-2 in conference play after being picked to finish last in the conference in the preseason media poll.

It was a nail-biting effort against the Volunteers on Saturday. In the win, Vanderbilt scored its last point of the game with 3:48 left in the second half. After that, the Commodores missed three shots and committed three turnovers but were able to contain Tennessee’s comeback.

Jason Edwards led the charge for the Commodores, tallying a team-high 18 points while shooting 6-10 from the field and 3-6 from beyond the arc. While Vanderbilt fans were forced to share the stands with the Tennessee faithful, they stormed the court by themselves after the upset win.

Mark Byington was happy to give the program something to celebrate.

“I was happy for our players. I was happy for the fans and former players, alumni and when you’re trying to build something you want people to buy in, you want them to support and sometimes they’re apprehensive until they see results,” Byington said. “They showed up and they had a great environment, great crowd. They helped us win.

“I could tell you guys, when we lost against Mississippi State I was really upset, distraught because we had a great crowd against Mississippi State and I was sitting here thinking, I was like, ‘All right, we got to get them to come back and we got to get them to believe in us.’ And, today, seeing this and I know they can walk around with pride on the V on their shirts and things like that. That makes me feel good that they can do that right now.”