Vanderbilt has its new head coach to replace Jerry Stackhouse

The Vanderbilt Commodores have a new head coach set to replace Jerry Stackhouse as their men’s basketball coach.

Vandy parted ways with Stackhouse last week following a disappointing 9-23 season. On Monday, ESPN reported the school is going to hire Mark Byington as their new head coach.

Byington has been the head coach at James Madison for the last four seasons. He led the Dukes to a 32-4 season, which included an upset win over Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. JMU was blown out by Duke on Sunday to end their season.

The 46-year-old Byington coached at Georgia Southern for seven seasons before being hired by JMU. He went 131-97 at Georgia Southern and had three straight 20-win seasons before being hired by James Madison. At James Madison, Byington went 82-36. His team won the conference regular season in 2020-2021. They finished behind Appalachian State for the Sun Belt regular season title but won the conference tournament this year to earn a berth into the NCAA Tournament.

Vandy isn’t too far removed from being a pretty strong program in the SEC during most of Kevin Stallings’ tenure as their head coach. The program slipped to 9-23 in 2018-2019 under Bryce Drew, who was fired after that season. Stackhouse improved things year after year and went 22-15 last season, but this year’s 9-23 finish was enough for the school to make a change to Byington.