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Vanderbilt

Mark Byington offers his take on how hard SEC road games are

Chandler Vesselsby:Chandler Vessels•01/12/25•

ChandlerVessels

mark byington
Andrew Nelles / The Tennessean / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

After getting his first taste of SEC basketball, Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington knows how difficult it will be to win on the road. The Commodores have so far played two conference road games in Byington’s first season at the helm and split them both.

However, they lost against Missouri in Columbia on Saturday by a score of 75-66. As Byington took the podium following the game, he had praise for the Tigers crowd and admitted the challenge of playing on the road.

“I’m two SEC road games in, but I don’t need any more than that,” he said. “It’s tough. It’s really tough. Your team’s gotta be — you can’t make mistakes. You’ve gotta make the right plays. …It’s the best league in the country. Best league ever from what the stats are saying. So winning on the road against teams is gonna be tough and home court advantage is gonna be big. We need ours. I thought Missouri had a great home court advantage today. Their crowd was into it and loud.”

Vanderbilt has now lost back-to-back games after opening SEC play with a win on the road against LSU. It is off to a 13-3 start to the season but clearly has some work to do if it hopes to be competitive in the conference standings.

Actually, the Commodores did manage to keep to close late and trailed by only two points with 2:11 remaining. However, Missouri held them scoreless the rest of the way as its crowd played a big factor down the stretch.

Byington came to Vanderbilt after serving as the coach at James Madison from 2020-24. He led them to a Sun Belt Conference title and NCAA Tournament appearance in 2023-24, advancing to the second round.

He takes over a Commodores squad that has not been to the NCAA Tournament since 2017 and coming off of a 9-23 season. So far he’s already led them to more victories than they had last year, but conference play clearly will be a different kind of challenge.

Nine SEC teams are ranked in the AP poll, including six in the top 10. Additionally, four teams that were not ranked received votes this past week, including Vanderbilt.

If the Commodores can learn from this most recent loss, they could be in the mix for one of the better years in a while. They’ll get their first chance to bounce back when they host South Carolina on Wednesday.