First serve of the NCAA Tennis Tournament is this Friday and Vanderbilt is back in the big dance for the first time since 2019. The return to the postseason has been led by a former star player now back as the team’s first-year head coach.
Scott Brown loves being back in Nashville, 18 years after he graduated as one of the most decorated players in program history.
“It felt like home,” Brown said. “It felt great when I first stepped back on campus and it’s been great wearing the black and gold again.”
Brown was a three-time All-SEC tennis selection during his playing career at Vanderbilt from 2002-05. He still ranks fifth all-time in program history in combined singles and doubles wins, having been a part of some of the best teams the school has produced.
The 2003 team coached by Ken Flach remains the Commodores’ best team ever, having captured the SEC championship and making it all the way to the final match at the NCAA Championships before losing a 4-3 heartbreaker to unbeaten Illinois.
“We had great inter-team leadership,” Brown said. “We were all self-motivated and pushed each other and that competition within the group. That’s the key ingredient for successful teams.”
Brown has seen that firsthand as a coach, as well. He served two stints as an assistant coach at Virginia, helping build the nation’s top men’s tennis program.
In 11 seasons at UVA, Brown helped guide the Cavaliers to four NCAA team championships, including back-to-back championships in 2022-23 as the team’s associate head coach. That made him one of the most coveted coaching candidates in the country when Vanderbilt called last spring.
“We knew Scott has a history of winning,” senior Jeremie Casabon said. “So as soon as we saw his name announced we were super excited that he would come back to Vanderbilt.”
Brown replaced Ian Duvenhage who retired as the program’s all-time winningest coach last May. Over 18 seasons Duvenhage made Vanderbilt a consistent winner, developing a culture that Brown says he was immediately able to build upon when he came back to Nashville. But in the ultra-competitive SEC the Commodores hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2019.
With Vanderbilt in the middle of its $300 million-plus Vandy United fundraising campaign to improve athletic facilities all over campus, including the new Lummis Family Tennis Center which will be expanded both indoors and outdoors to become one of the best facilities in the SEC, Brown returned to embark on his own building project as he looks to restore the program’s winning edge.
“There’s a lot of stuff happening with Vandy United, a lot of upgrades with facilities,” Brown said. “Our athletic director Candice Lee is phenomenal, so there’s a lot of great people here. Vanderbilt has all the ingredients to be successful. We’re one of the best academic institutions in the country in, what is my opinion, the best athletic conference in the country in the SEC and then we have the backdrop of Nashville surrounding us, which is huge.”
Brown’s return has paid immediate dividends for Vanderbilt. The Commodores have won 13 matches this spring, including impressive conference wins over Auburn and South Carolina.
On Monday the Commodores were selected to the NCAA Tournament where they will take on Oklahoma State Friday in a first-round match in Columbus, Ohio. The start of what they hope is another May run to remember by Brown.
“To do that is a credit to the players,” Brown said. “No one transferred when I got the job. They’ve all bought in from day one. They’ve battled through the adversity of the year and kept working to get better, so they deserve all the credit. It’s a great opportunity to see what we can do. We’ve got nothing to lose. We’re going to be swinging free for the fences and leaving it all out there, so yeah, this is exactly where we want to be.”
It’s a great first step for a program that has goals of getting back to the lofty heights it enjoyed when Brown was a player and believes it can sustain that level of success long-term thanks to its new head coach, the commitment from the school and a team that has helped lay the foundation this season.
“We’re super excited that we could be a part of Scott’s first year to set the correct culture,” Casabon said. “This group of guys can say we set in stone what Vanderbilt tennis really is.”
