Nashville, TENN--It was easy to see.

As current Vanderbilt head coach Mark Byington walked out of College of Charleston head coach Bobby Cremins' office in 2006, Cremins knew.

The grizzled head coaching veteran envisioned a role like this for Byington even back then, perhaps even before he hired him as an assistant.

"I could tell he was the package," Cremins says of his takeaway from Byington's job interview in 2006. "I could tell he could recruit, he could coach. I liked everything about him."

It's now been over 18 years since that interview. Since then Byington has taken three head coaching jobs, he's lead a program to an NCAA Tournament and he's looking to find a way to establish himself in the country's most difficult conference.

He still picks up the phone to call Cremins for advice, though.

“He’s a special person to me,” Byington says of Cremins. “I cherish his relationship.”

Cremins has walked through all of Byington's stops with him, although he doesn't want Byington to be viewed as a disciple of his.

He wants the Vanderbilt coach to run his own race, but with some assistance.

"We talk but I always leave him alone," Cremins says. "After some games I might text him something that I saw but I stay out of it. He needs to be his own person, which he is."

Byington got a taste of running his own program for the first time as a result of that in 2012 as he stepped in for Cremins as Charleston's interim head coach while Cremins took a leave of absence due to exhaustion.

The then College of Charleston assistant went 7-4 in those 11 games at the helm. Perhaps that had something to do with what Cremins instilled in him.

"[Cremins] would say it all the time ‘look I’m doing this for you to be a head coach’ and I took his message," Byington says.

What Byington did in that 11-game sample size still stands out to Cremins 12 years later.

"He really came through for me," Cremins says. "You could see it then, you could just see it. It was coming that he was going to get an opportunity."

After a total of eight years in Charleston and a season at Virginia Tech, Byington finally got his shot at Georgia Southern. That was a springboard for the first-time head coach.

Cremins views Byington's current opportunity as more than that, though,

"This will be his biggest challenge," Cremins says of Byington's Vanderbilt job. "This is what he worked for."

Byington will get to see the fruits of his labor as Vanderbilt faces off against Nevada on Thursday night at his old stomping grounds.

The first-year Vanderbilt coach knows his bubble will quickly be bursted if it doesn't approach Steve Alford team's with the level of intensity it needs to. As a result, he quickly shrugged off any semblance of individual reflection when asked about the event.

"The Charleston tournament is really good," Byington declared. "I just peeked at [Nevada] for a little bit and they're an NCAA Tournament team. They are really, really good."

"We're gonna figure out a lot about ourself after these three games."

Cremins feels as if that's a microcosm for Byington in this job. The former College of Charleston coach feels as if Byington will learn plenty about himself in his current role.

"This is no longer the mid division one, this is the SEC," Cremins says. "I think this will be his biggest challenge."

In Byington's biggest challenge of a job, he's now got his biggest test yet in that role. As he enters the sideline that he and Cremins once shared he'll have as much to prove as he did years ago in Cremins' abscence.