Tyrin Lawrence enters the NBA Draft

Mar 27, 2023 - 8:13 PM

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Per an announcement on Twitter, Vanderbilt guard Tyrin Lawrence, the team’s second-leading scorer in 2022-23, is entering the NBA Draft while maintaining his college eligibility. Notably, Lawrence did not also enter the transfer portal — perhaps a good sign for his odds of returning to Vanderbilt.

I’m not going to comment on how this affects Vanderbilt’s basketball team for 2023-24, because honestly, it doesn’t as of right now. Lawrence isn’t showing up on mock drafts, which is usually a good sign that you’re not going to get drafted, although mock drafts this far out tend to be pretty hit or miss about who’s actually going to get drafted in the second round (and, anyway, going undrafted instead of going in the second round doesn’t affect your odds of making the league by much.) As of right now, he’s declared for the NBA Draft while maintaining college eligibility — meaning, he might come back or he might not. This is just the sort of bullshit that college basketball fans (and coaches) have to go through any time you have a player who’s remotely on the NBA’s radar. We’ll just say for now that it would be very bad for Vanderbilt if Tyrin Lawrence does not come back next season.