Vanderbilt University's women's basketball team held off a fourth-quarter push from Columbia University on Wednesday night to win its first March Madness game since 2013. The Dores’ scrap-and-shoot game set up a physical contest that Columbia didn’t have the size to win, while a stable of capable Vandy defenders neutralized Ivy League star Abbey Hsu. Sacha Washington produced in the paint with an all-season performance. Iyana Moore scored well, headlined by clutch 3-point shooting in the second half.Â
The game picked up extra hype with a national write-up on Hsu and provocative comments from Columbia head coach Megan Griffith, who turned a simple basketball game into a proxy battle between the two least likable conferences in college sports. After a blowout loss to Princeton in the Ivy League final, Griffith tempted fate (not smart) by naming her talented team’s future executioner.
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“The NCAA talks about wanting to grow the game, and we consistently put SEC teams in that are 17-and, or 15-and-14,” Griffith told the cameras after reciting a season’s worth of facts supporting Columbia’s tournament case. Eight SEC teams (all with at least 19 wins) compete in this year’s tournament. Princeton remains as the sole Ivy League representative.
The shadowy NCAA selection committee responded by thrusting forth Vandy as the SEC’s champion on Selection Sunday. Often the subject of SEC ridicule as a prestigious private school with a bad football team, the Dores figuratively put their powerhouse conference on their backs to figuratively dunk on the Ivy League, a conference the university would probably join immediately against the wishes of its athletic department.
After ending a respectable 23-9 season with an embarrassing loss to Florida in the SEC tournament, Vandy teetered for 10 agonizing days on the dreaded “bubble” of the NCAA tournament. Now the team has a win under its belt and a well-earned spot in the proper first round. They play Baylor University on Friday at 5 p.m.
