By Nicole Auerbach, Kyle Tucker, Joe Rexrode and Greg Rosenstein
Vanderbilt is expected to hire James Madison’s Mark Byington as its next men’s basketball coach, a program source told The Athletic on Monday. Byington led the No. 12-seeded Dukes to their first NCAA Tournament win since 1983 on Friday, a 72-61 victory against No. 5 seed Wisconsin.
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JMU won 32 games this season, the most in program history, and took home the Sun Belt tournament title. Byington went 82-36 over four years in Harrisonburg. He previously coached Georgia Southern for seven seasons.
Earlier this month — prior to the Sun Belt tournament — Byington signed a new deal with James Madison that extended him through 2032 and increased his buyout for a Power 5 conference job from $500,000 to $1 million, according to a program source. That added buyout money will be crucial for James Madison as it seeks a new coach.
Vanderbilt parted ways with former coach Jerry Stackhouse earlier this month after five seasons. The former North Carolina All-American and NBA All-Star finished 9-23 (4-14 in the SEC) in his final season and failed to take the Commodores to the NCAA Tournament.
Why Vanderbilt made his move
Byington did a masterful job at James Madison, where he inherited a 9-21 team and posted a winning record in all four seasons leading the Dukes. He won 22 games last season as JMU jumped from the CAA to the Sun Belt, and this year took the program to unseen heights. It started with a stunning win at then-No. 4 Michigan State in November and ended in the second round of the NCAA Tournament.
The previous school record for wins was 24, back in 1982, when Lou Campanelli was the coach. Byington crushed that number, winning 32 games this season, while also getting the Dukes back to the dance for the first time since 2013 and just the second time in 30 years. They upset fifth-seeded Wisconsin last week to win a game in the 64-team field — not a play-in game — for the first time in 41 years.
Byington balanced his roster with high school recruits he developed and transfer portal additions that put the program over the top. Vanderbilt needs plenty of roster help, and it’s notable that JMU’s leading scorer, 6-foot-6 guard Terrence Edwards, who averaged 17.2 points, 4.4 rebounds and 3.4 assists, has another year of eligibility remaining. Edwards was one of Byington’s first big recruits at JMU.
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“He lets us play free, but when it’s time, Coach draws up smart plays,” Edwards told The Athletic early this season. “He’s got tricks up his sleeve. He has plays to beat any defense. He can make it look like we’re running one play, but he tweaks it and you won’t catch it. He’s so detailed and so smart, it just gives every player on the court total confidence in what we’re doing.” — Kyle Tucker, staff writer
Has Vanderbilt found the way out of years of irrelevance?
Vanderbilt last made the NCAA Tournament in 2016-17, Bryce Drew’s first season — but he did it with predecessor Kevin Stallings’ players and in part by switching back to Stallings’ offense because they were more comfortable in it. Two disastrous 20-loss seasons and a firing followed, and Stackhouse couldn’t get it done in five seasons.
Stackhouse was an outside-the-box hire, and now Vandy has gone back to the traditional model of hiring a successful mid-major coach. Byington’s pedigree matches up well with other available coaches at his level. He’ll have a new facility, name, image and likeness fundraising momentum and SEC money on his side.
But that also means he’ll have to contend with an SEC that is much stronger, deeper and serious about basketball collectively as it was a decade ago — back when Stallings was taking Vanderbilt to the NCAA Tournament seven times in 13 years. Bobby Cremins, who kept Byington on his College of Charleston staff when he got the job in 2006 and elevated him to top assistant during his tenure, told The Athletic of Byington: “He works as hard as anybody I’ve been around. He knows the game extremely well and what he did this year is amazing. This is a great opportunity for him in a tough league — a very tough league. But I think he fits the mold.” — Joe Rexrode, Nashville columnist
Required reading
(Photo: Robert Deutsch / USA Today)