Mark Byington’s mom said Missouri win puts Vanderbilt in NCAA Tournament: ‘She’s my bracketologist’

Mark Byington can’t even make a coffee run to Starbucks without Vanderbilt fans around Nashville reminding the first-year head coach on his team’s dubious status on the 2025 NCAA Tournament bubble.

Turns out everyone and their mother is a bracketologist — including Byington’s own, it appears.

Fresh off Saturday’s 97-93 overtime upset of No. 14 Missouri, the unranked Commodores’ third-consecutive win over Top 25 opponents, Vanderbilt (20-9, 8-8 SEC) may have locked up a highly-coveted NCAA Tournament bid with a week remaining in the regular season. At least according to Byington’s mother.

“My mom told me if we win today, we’re in the NCAA Tournament, so she’s my bracketologist,” Byington joked in the postgame press conference Saturday.

ESPN’s own bracketologist, Joe Lunardi, agrees with Mrs. Byington, recently elevating the ‘Dores from his “Last Four In” list and currently projecting Vanderbilt as a No. 9 seed in the South Region, where it would face 8th-seeded Illinois in Lunardi’s latest Bracketology released Sunday morning.

Not that Byington and the Commodores are resting on their laurels ahead of their final two regular season games against SEC rivals Arkansas and Georgia before turning their attention to the 2025 SEC Tournament, which will tip off in two weeks from Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena.

Mark Byington on no longer being on NCAA bubble: ‘Now we can focus on just getting better’

“I’ve talked to the guys already about (what) our mentality is: we’re not satisfied with our stability of being in the NCAA Tournament,” Byington said. “We need to keep getting better and position ourselves for the SEC Tournament and (achieve a seed) as high as we can possibly get to. Try to make a run in that tournament, and then when the Selection Committee decides where we’re going to go, we’ll try to make a run in that tournament.”

After starting just 2-6 against Top 25 teams this season, including dropping three straight ranked games earlier this month, Vanderbilt appears to be playing its best ball down the stretch with back-to-back-to-back ranked victories over Ole Miss, Texas A&M and now Missouri to quiet the doubters.

Not that Byington expects his next Starbucks run to be any less interesting.

“It is funny, I shouldn’t have said that because now it gets said even more,” Byington concluded. “This team has done a good job (getting) in the position to take that pressure off and now we can focus on just getting better and trying to win the games. Look, it’s not fun being on the bubble, it’s not fun having all those things, because no one’s going to have a conversation with you without bringing it up. I just learned that. Same way with our guys.

“Now we’re past that, and it’s about figuring out how to keep improving. I know we have some areas we can get better at and try to make a run with these last two games in the SEC and then try to make a run down at Bridgestone (Arena).”