Huge cheers erupted late in the fourth quarter Thursday night, when Vanderbilt women’s basketball coach Shea Ralph rotated in her second unit, pulling out stars Sacha Washington, Mikayla Blakes and Aubrey Galvan. Ralph and Washington hugged at the half-court sideline, the 6-foot-2 forward lowering her head into Ralph’s shoulder.
“ I just don't want it to end,” Ralph told reporters later that evening after an 85-60 victory over No. 24 Alabama, iced by a three-pointer from Aga Makurat. “And I know they don't want it to end either, and we got a long way to go.”
Ralph and her players have refused to talk about March during the regular season. A game at a time, they say — nothing is guaranteed. Star sophomore guard Mikayla Blakes has led the team to a 26-3 record and a No. 5 national ranking. Blakes regularly scores 30 points and has become a frontrunner for national player of the year awards. With the win over Alabama Thursday, the Commodores finished the regular season undefeated in Memorial Gym for the first time in program history, and players are finally starting to think about making more history in March.
The school’s athletic director — the first Black woman to hold the position in the SEC — is helping her teams dominate
“ I think it's just exciting that we get to come back for the first two rounds, so it's not really our last game,” said Washington, who notched her sixth double-double of the season in the ’Dores’ win over Alabama. “We're excited because, on the women’s side, we're allowed to have home-court advantage. We've worked so hard to be able to get that. Now we get to play in front of our crew.”
Strong wins over No. 4 Texas, No. 6 LSU and No. 7 Oklahoma helped Vanderbilt lock up a top-four seed in the SEC tournament, guaranteeing a coveted double-bye straight to the quarterfinals. ESPN predictions put Vanderbilt as one of the tournament’s two-seeds. Little is expected to change after Vanderbilt’s final regular season game — a road trip to Knoxville to face unranked rivals Tennessee — and an SEC tournament win could vault Vanderbilt even higher in March Madness bracketology.
This week's wins over Alabama and No. 16 Kentucky helped Vanderbilt bounce back from their season’s one real blemish, a two-point road loss against then-unranked Georgia on Feb. 15. (The win later put the Bulldogs into the top 25.) The ’Dores’ two other losses came from tournament teams — No. 3 South Carolina and No. 19 Ole Miss — rounding out a strong résumé that has put them into the championship conversation.
Blakes has followed a phenomenal rookie year with even better scoring numbers in her sophomore season. Now joined by point guard Aubrey Galvan, a quick ballhandler recruited by Ralph last year, Blakes has blossomed as a tenacious defender. Washington, the only remaining player from Ralph’s inaugural 2022 roster, has complemented both guards as a dynamic rebounder, passer and paint defender.
While both the men’s and women’s basketball teams started the season strong, the Vanderbilt men have struggled lately while the women’s side has stayed in elite form. A recent editorial in the Vanderbilt Hustler points out that attention disparities still persist, with average attendance at men’s games more than twice that of women’s games. The Feb. 24 appeal invites the campus to tune into the nightly Blakes show “to meet the excitement that is building beyond our campus” around women’s basketball.
Assuming all goes according to plan on selection Sunday, a packed Memorial Gym could give Vanderbilt an even greater edge in the first — and maybe second — round of the NCAA national championship tournament, which begins March 18.
