Nashville, TENN--Mark Byington said on Thursday that his first game at the helm would offer a look at the framework of his team.

If Monday night's opener was any indication, that framework is something worth putting some hope in.

Vanderbilt's 102-63 win over Maryland Eastern Shore had its flaws, as Byington's Vanderbilt team does, but offered a glimpse of life into a program that hasn't had much in recent memory.

On Monday night Vanderbilt basketball wasn't perfect, but it was fun again.

Byington's team got up and down, it was aggressive defensively and it had its go-to guys play like go-to guys.

The rest of the season will indicate how often that happens, but on Monday night Vanderbilt took care of business. It came out ready to play and looked like the best team for all 40 minutes.

That should be the standard in a quad-four game like Vanderbilt played in on Monday, but it hasn't been in the past. Monday offered hope that it could be the norm.

A performance like Vanderbilt had in its opener wasn't unsustainable. In some ways it felt like the floor.

The Commodores shot just 23.5% from 3-point range and were without their primary ballhandler with AJ Hoggard serving a one-game suspension. They'll also have to clean up their defense, which let up at times and let UMES back into the game.

Vanderbilt's product has to get significantly better before SEC play, there's no doubt about that. But there's plenty of time for that.

For now it's better and it's meeting the standard.

It's a far cry from a year ago's opening-night debacle against Presbyterian. The dark cloud that a game like that created no longer has power over this program.

This place and this team are renewed, they're also refreshing.

Vanderbilt has to clean some things up, particularly on the defensive end where it felt as if Maryland Eastern Shore had far too many looks from beyond the arc, and has some holes in its roster.

It has a chance, though.

Vanderbilt showed on Monday night that it isn't a tournament lock, but it showed that it's worth keeping an eye on. That's progress.