It wasn’t long ago when Kevin Stallings was the fixture in the Tennessee-Vanderbilt men’s basketball showdown.
Stallings guided the Commodores for 17 seasons from 1999 to 2016 and faced six Volunteers coaches along the way: Jerry Green, Buzz Peterson, Bruce Pearl, Cuonzo Martin, Donnie Tyndall and Rick Barnes. Now it’s Barnes who is anchoring the rivalry, as Tennessee’s 10th-year coach will face his fourth Commodores counterpart when the No. 6 Vols invade Memorial Gym on Saturday (3:30 p.m. Eastern on the SEC Network).
Tennessee has been one of college basketball’s best stories this season with its 16-1 overall record and 3-1 Southeastern Conference mark, having spent a program-record five weeks at No. 1, but the Commodores are qualifying as very pleasant surprises under first-year coach Mark Byington. Vanderbilt has not reached the NCAA tournament since making consecutive one-and-done visits in 2016 under Stallings and 2017 under Bryce Drew, but this year’s team is 14-3 overall and 2-2 within the league.
ESPN basketball analyst Joe Lunardi on Friday had Vanderbilt as the first team on the outside of his projected 68-member field, which is a far cry from last season’s Commodores, who went 9-23 during Jerry Stackhouse’s fifth and final season.
“Mark has done a great job, and I have a lot of respect for Mark,” Barnes said Friday in a news conference. “He’s done a great job of going into the (transfer) portal quickly and getting guys who play the way he wants. They’re very aggressive. They create a lot of havoc. They really go for steals and really try to turn you over.