Exclusive: Could Tyler Tanner Play Off The Ball At Times For Vanderbilt Basketball?

NASHVILLE—Mark Byington doesn’t remember the games exactly, but he does remember knowing exactly what he needed to address coming out of them. Byington recalls his team escaping a few times with Duke Miles out of the lineup due to an injury, but knowing he couldn’t keep doing this to Tyler Tanner. 

Tanner was handling things like the standup person Byington declares him to be by declaring that he was okay playing all 40 minutes, but he knew that playing Tanner without a complementary guard wasn’t good for anyone. But without Miles or veteran guard Frankie Collins in the lineup, Vanderbilt had no choice but to put Tanner in that position. 

“I was wearing him out,” Byington admitted after Vanderbilt’s Monday-night exhibition win over UAB. “He could throw it to somebody and go back and get it and have to do everything else. He was getting worn out. So having somebody where he can go on and off the ball and make plays is important to him and his longevity.” 

Monday, it finally appeared as if Tanner had that. 

When Tanner and Vanderbilt freshman Ant Brown–who Tanner described as “one of one” and a player who will surprise the country in 2026-27–played together Monday, Brown ran the show. When the ball was inbounded, Brown walked it up and Tanner was already on the 3-point line preparing for the action Vanderbilt was set to get into. 

He didn’t have to set up the offense. He didn’t have to communicate with Byington or handle ball pressure. He was just there with a chance to read and react. Tanner won’t get used to that and will clearly be on the ball more than he’s off it as he enters 2026-27 as a preseason All-American point guard, but he’s finally got the chance to shed some proverbial weight as the pressure comes off of him for a few possessions. 

Tanner doesn’t believe his time at the two is necessarily done with the intent of increasing his scoring volume easily, but he’s of the belief that it could help him navigate different coverages defenses will throw at him now that he’s at the top of the scouting report every night. Tanner doesn’t believe he’ll have an issue impacting the game if he doesn’t play the two often–as does Byington, who declares that Tanner can play both positions well–but he wants to see this through. 

“I think it’ll help me a lot,” Tanner told Vandy on SI. “It just allows me to play the same game I always play.” 

That game manifested in Tanner averaging 19.5 points, 5.1 assists and 3.6 rebounds per game while shooting 48.5% from the field as well as 36.8% from 3-point range a season ago. Now, he’s been tabbed a preseason All-American by a number of outlets and was the SEC Preseason Player of The Year runner up. 

Tanner was good enough to declare for the NBA Draft and have a legitimate chance to stay in it a spring ago. He went to the NBA Combine and participated in both scrimmages while working to improve his stock and saying that he was intent on doing what he could to stay in the draft. In the end, though, Tanner was a fringe first round draft pick and opted to come back to Vanderbilt for another season. 

He received feedback from NBA executives that indicated they wanted to see more from him as a defender in ballscreens and that they wanted him to get stronger, but Tanner has said repeatedly that he’s open to anything that can help him improve. As a result, he’s willing to give this a shot–particularly since he feels the way he does about Vanderbilt’s other guards. 

“They take a lot of pressure off of me,” Tanner said. “Last year, we had Duke Miles but a lot of times [Byington] would want me to play the one most of the time. I think [Brown] and Ace [Glass] will be able to play that one spot and we also have bigs that can bring it up. Whatever defenses and coverages they’re throwing at me, I think it’ll help me by just taking a little bit of that load off.”

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