The Commodores got the job done in their first game of the SEC Tournament Friday over their rivals. Here is everything Byington said.
NASHVILLE – Vanderbilt came away with a resume-boosting win over its in-state rival Tennessee by a score of 75-68 on quarterfinal Friday to advance to Saturday's semifinals. The Commodores were led by guard Duke Miles, who finished the game with 30 points on 11-for-14 shooting.
Miles was doing everything from scoring to assisting to showing off his skills defensively as Vanderbilt found a way to take the season series over its rival.“Yeah, I mean, that was round three. Tennessee and Vanderbilt have had some terrific games this year. It's two teams that are evenly matched. I just love our will to be able to pull out these last two. It's hard to beat a team in back-to-back games.” “Where we were...I just thought our guys played super aggressive. I love it that they were just attacking the entire time. Just their mentality. It was fun to coach 'em. Heck of a game. We're fortunate to be able to move on. We know as you keep going on, it gets tougher and tougher. We'll wake up tomorrow, there's going to be four SEC teams here. We're one of them.”You held Nate Ament to only one field goal made today. How important was Tyler Nickel's defense on him down the stretch? “Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned Tyler Nickel's name. His defense was great. He's known for other things. It's two good players from the state of Virginia. Nate is a terrific player. I thought Tyler Nickel got us going and other guys helped out.” “We watched him play yesterday. He came back, wasn't rusty at all, and had a terrific game. To be able to limit his scoring was huge for us. I wish we kept him off the foul line a little better, but the other parts are really good.” You said coming into the season a goal was to improve defensively from last year to this year. Do you feel that showed up in the second half? “Well, I think the defense shows up in a lot of ways. It shows in tournament games. It shows up in road games. We finished the last three on the road. I thought we played really good defense the previous game against Tennessee.” “It takes everything. We kind of anticipated not getting off to a great start. You look at the teams that had a bye, that played a team the day before, yesterday every team that had a bye was down at halftime. The only team that won was Tennessee.” “We really tried to put more emphasis on our defense to hopefully kind of calm it down till our offense came around. Luckily our offense did come around.” It's usually Tyler being the one that takes over games. How good was it to see you have another player in Duke? “Yeah, I mean, Duke, he started looking like himself I think last week rhythm-wise and pace. The ball in his hands was a comfort to everybody. He had a great pace to his game, making decisions. He can make passes and score. He started right away, got a layup for us right away, just the entire game, big shots, big moments.” “We lean on Tyler Tanner a ton. Everybody knows that. But there's other capable guys out there, as well. So for Duke to have a big night, that's not surprising for anybody in our locker room.” Florida comes in tomorrow having won 12 games in a row. When you have a team that's on a hot streak, how do you make sure mentally you're not thinking of that being daunting? “Yeah, I mean, they're the hottest team in the country. We don't have to beat them 12 times. We have to try to beat them once. We had a really good game in Memorial Gymnasium this year. That could have gone either way. It felt like it was a long time ago.” “I think they're a different team. I think they're better than what they were when we played them at Memorial. I think we have the capability to be better than we were that night. I know they're playing for a 1 seed. I think they're deserving. They're one of the best teams in the country. We'll take a shot tomorrow and see what we got.” For most of the time since Duke has come back from injury, you had him coming off the bench. You moved him back into the starting lineup. What was the reasoning for that? “Yeah, it might be the Ole Miss game. I'm not 100%. It's one of those things where we had a big lineup. I thought we were good in a lot of areas, rebounding and defense. You see the offensive burst that we can get with Duke. It just makes everybody better. He can find other guys.” “I didn't want him to kind of lose his rotation because of an injury. He fought through an injury for much of the year. We had to get him back in rhythm, get our team in rhythm. I think we're there now.” We always hear coaches talk about how they want their team playing to their best potential in March. Safe to say you love the way your team is playing right now? “I mean, we're winning in a way that sometimes isn't beautiful, but as a coach it does feel beautiful. We're winning tough, grind-it-out, physical games that are hard-fought. To get a rebound in this game was difficult. It doesn't get any easier tomorrow.” “I think luckily for us, with Tennessee and Florida, probably the two most physical teams in the country, we got them on back-to-back nights. We got to recover quickly. I like our mentality now that we can win in ugly-style games, which a lot of the tournament games are like that, road games are like that. We'll need it again.” Duke is obviously going to get a lot of love after this game. You talked about Tyler. How much easier is your job in preparing for some of these? “It's almost now where he has trouble surprising me. But he's just a special player. He's everything that you want, somebody to be a leader of your team, All-Conference player. He cares about our team. He cares about his teammates. He cares about winning. I just love his fearlessness. He's getting better and better as we keep on going. He's still young. He's a special person, a special player.”Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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