Audio By Carbonatix
There is a palpable buzz in Nashville about Vanderbilt head coach Mark Byington and what he can bring to the college basketball program. The 48-year-old is already making sweeping changes to the culture.
Every single player on the Commodores’ roster is listed as a point guard and it’s not an accident.
Byington was hired in March as the successor to Jerry Stackhouse. He most recently spent four years at James Madison and quickly built a Mid-Major powerhouse. The Dukes went 32-4 last season, with an early earth-shattering win over Michigan State, to earn a No. 12 seed in March Madness. They stomped Wisconsin in the first round but could not advance beyond the Round of 32.
Everywhere Byington goes, he wins. That was true at Georgia Southern. That was true at JMU.
He is expected to win at Vanderbilt.
The Dores had some good teams in recent years but they have not made the NCAA Tournament since Bryce Drew’s first year in 2017. Byington built a team that can finally get back to the dance through the transfer portal and basically started from scratch.
The roster will look totally different— in more ways than one!
Vanderbilt basketball has 18 point guards… kind of.
First and foremost, Vandy added 10 pretty high-profile transfers:
- Jaylen Cary, power forward, James Madison
- M.J. Collins, combo guard, Virginia Teech
- Jason Edwards, combo guard, North Texas
- Alex Hemenway, forward, Clemson
- A.J. Hoggard, point guard, Michigan State
- Grant Huffman, point guard, Davidson
- Chris Manon, forward, Cornell
- Devin McGlockton, forward, Boston College
- Tyler Nickel, forward, North Carolina
- Kijani Wright, center, USC
Although those are their actual positions, that is not how they are defined on the team’s official roster. Every single player on the team is listed as a “point guard,” including the holdovers. Every single one!
As weird as it looks, the roster positioning is on purpose.
Mark Byington has said on multiple occasions throughout the preseason that he wants multiple players on his team to think and act like point guards. The decision to list every player at the same position is a strategic move focused on mentality. All 18 guys, regardless of where they play on the floor, should think like a point guard. Thus, they are all point guards!