Grant Huffman is embracing simpleness, new opportunity at Vanderbilt

Davidson transfer Grant Huffman isn't pretending to be something he's not.

Rather, he's embracing what he is.

"I feel like I'm a simple guy," Huffman said. "I like to hang with my buddies. I like to watch sports with them. My brother, he's a big part of my life. He actually lived down here for my senior year so I've got extremely close with him. I love hanging out with my family. They're the ones that I'm normally around the most and I like to have a good time. I feel like that's usually to run down."

That simpleness doesn't take away from what Huffman is on the floor, though. Perhaps it enhances it.

"I'm a team player," Huffman said. "I'm an ultra competitive, competitive guy. I'm an old guy with experience and I'm gonna be 23 next year playing."

Huffman jokingly refers to himself as an "old man" in this game. That's partly because the Davidson graduate transfer never thought he'd be referred to as a graduate transfer.

"I had no idea I was gonna get an extra year of eligibility or anything like that."

Thanks to Covid, the 6-foot-4 guard picked one up.

As Huffman examined his options, a departure from Davidson after four seasons seemed to be the natural progression due to its lack of a graduate program.

The Aurora, Ohio, native now sits in the midst of his final exam week at Davidson and reflects not only on what he's accomplished in his four-year career in the Atlantic 10, but also how rare that type of career is in this climate of college basketball.

"There's something I'm kind of proud of just because there's a lot of turnover now in college sports with the transfer portal and with coaches going a lot of places and especially with the newer landscape of NIL and all that," Huffman said of staying at Davidson for four seasons. "I had a great four years here, [Davidson] made the NCAA tournament, we were regular season champs one year. I have nothing but good things to say about my time [at Davidson.]"

Huffman's tenure at Davidson is even more rare when considering its coaching change that occurred before Huffman's junior season.

Now it's time for a new coach in Huffman's story. A coach that has communicated that he doesn't just want Huffman to leave Vanderbilt with a degree that will help him. He wants this to be worthwhile for the Davidson transfer on the basketball side, as well.

"[Vanderbilt coach Mark Byington] really gave me reassurance that he has no plan of this being a rebuild year," Huffman said. "He has a plan of this being successful."

Huffman joined Byington in that vision as Vanderbilt's roster was still heavily in flux. That came with some questions on Huffman's end.

The veteran guard got the answers he needed from Byington.

"I just wanna be a part of a winning program and I wanna play with some guys that I know I can get along with," Huffman said. "When I committed there weren't a lot of players on the roster but they said that what they're looking for is high character guys, guys that are gonna win.

"Something that I loved hearing about was just all the resources that Vanderbilt has," Huffman added. "I met with the strength coach, who was at Michigan, he was fantastic to talk to."

Huffman left Nashville and his visit with some conviction. He wanted to be a part of what Byington was building.

"A combination of those things just made it really easy to choose them," the 6-foot-4 guard said. "I thought it was the perfect fit for me."

With that decision, the "old man" gets a chance to be one of the new guys. Huffman also feels as if he has a chance to be one of Vanderbilt's primary decision makers and ballhandlers.

"Obviously a lot will unfold in the preseason, but I think that would be awesome, I think it's an option but yes, I'd say so." Huffman said when asked if he expects to be one of the primary ballhandlers. "That was just one thing, why [Byington] said he was interested in me is just so that I can make decisions, make the right play, get others involved and just make the right pass to everyone and make the right play."

The fifth-year senior wants to help bring this program back to where it hasn't been recently in whatever role he's given.

“I’m ready to go," Huffman said. "I know the past couple seasons haven’t been what [Vanderbilt fans] want necessarily. I think they've had some good and bad parts of the season but I think that I wouldn't want anything more than to have a dominant winning season."

There's no mention of individual accolades in a talk with Huffman, who didn't put up flashy numbers at Davidson. That's ok with him, though.

Huffman just wants to win. This is his last chance to do that at this level.

"I'm gonna do whatever it takes to win," Huffman said. "The one thing that I want is to win."