The Vanderbilt basketball team lost the SEC tournament championship game on Sunday to Arkansas. Arkansas defeated the Commodores, 86-75. Vanderbilt head coach Mark Byington had a message for the NCAA tournament selection committee, following the loss.
“We should be a high seed,” Byington said postgame, per Sports Illustrated.
Byington then went on to clarify the comments.
“Regardless, we're not going to bicker. We're not going to complain. As soon as they announce where we're going, we're almost erasing the numbers. We're happy to be there,” Byington added. “We'll compete. But this team has had a really good year. So they earned something high, but that's out of our control right now. We had our lost chance here a couple minutes ago.”
The Commodores had a great run in the SEC conference tournament. Vanderbilt defeated Florida in the semi-finals, to end the Gators' 12-game win streak. The Commodores also picked up a win in the tournament over Tennessee.
“I do hope the brackets weren't set a couple days ago and they were watching us all the way through here because we could have got this game. We got the last two. We're playing good basketball,” Byington said.
The run ended on Sunday, as Vanderbilt was unable to keep up with Arkansas in the second half of the SEC championship game. Arkansas outscored Vanderbilt in the second half, 45-36.
“We do a great job at this. Our program is about when we get knocked down, we get back up. We're dejected. We wanted this. We put everything into it. We'll get back up and we're excited about the NCAA tournament coming up next week,” Byington said.
Byington is in just his second season at Vanderbilt. He is about to lead his Commodores to their second consecutive NCAA tournament appearance. Before coming to the school, he was the head coach at James Madison.
