What Dawn Staley said about Vanderbilt’s rise, challenge Gamecocks face Sunday
Vanderbilt women’s basketball has spent much of the last decade in relative mediocrity.
The Commodores recorded just one winning season between 2014 and 2023 before head coach Shea Ralph started to right the ship with the first NCAA Tournament appearance in a decade in 2024.
Ralph’s first two seasons with Vanderbilt ended with losing records, but she’s since strung together back-to-back NCAA Tournament bids and the first consecutive 20-win seasons since the 2011-12 and 2012-13 seasons.
And this season, Vanderbilt’s program is fully back in the national conversation.
The Commodores come to Columbia to play No. 2 South Carolina this weekend as one of the two remaining undefeated Division I programs in the country. The other is Ralph’s alma mater, UConn. Vanderbilt is 20-0 and ranked No. 5 in the country, marking the first time Vanderbilt has climbed into the Top 5 in nearly 25 years.
Ralph has cemented herself among the front-runners for national coach of the year.
“Shea’s done a great job,” Gamecocks coach Dawn Staley told local media Friday. “You could almost see it coming, even though they were losing. You have to create this culture and this ability to believe, right? You get your players, they’re all on that same page. Belief. You feel good about what you’re doing. You create these habits, and you just play them. They’ve played them 20 times this season, and they’ve been good. Their habits over everybody else’s habits. So we got to get better. We got to get better, to be like them, to be perfect.”
A large part of Vanderbilt’s resurgence in the last two years is due to star guard Mikayla Blakes.
The Commodores star guard burst onto the women’s hoops scene last year when she averaged 23.3 points per game as a freshman. Blakes was named the SEC Rookie of the Year and earned All-SEC. She was also named National Freshman of the Year by the US Basketball Writers Association and was an Associated Press and USBWA All-American.
This year Blakes has only improved. She leads the SEC with 24.8 points per game and is averaging nearly 30 points per contest in league play. Blakes has scored at least 30 points five times this season, including a season-high 38 points against Mississippi State this month. Last year, Blakes scored more than 50 points in a game twice.
Blakes will no doubt be a key player to stop when Vanderbilt comes to Columbia this weekend. In two matchups last year, Blakes scored 19 and 20 points against South Carolina. Granted, Vanderbilt lost both games to South Carolina by an average of 24.5 points. Blakes has also received some backup this year from fellow guard Aubrey Galvan. The true freshman is second on the team with 11.7 points per game.
South Carolina was burned by a star guard last time out against Oklahoma. True freshman Aaliah Chavez scored 15 of her 26 points in overtime to help the No. 16 Sooners upset the Gamecocks on Thursday. Staley hopes her team can take a few lessons from the way they played against Chavez and apply it to Vanderbilt.
“We gotta guard,” Staley said. “We just played against a really good point guard. Everything that Oklahoma presented to us [is] there with Vandy. So if you want the do-over, here’s the do-over in every facet of where we got beat. So hopefully we can take care of that.”
Heading into the weekend, Vanderbilt is tied with Tennessee for the top spot in the SEC. The Commodores are undefeated in league play and have a big win on their resume over LSU. There’s still plenty of basketball to be played, but Vanderbilt is positioning itself for a run at the SEC regular-season crown and the No. 1 seed in the SEC Tournament.
But the rest of the Commodores schedule is daunting to say the least. The Commodores are set to play eight ranked opponents in their next 10 games, including No. 2 South Carolina on Sunday.
“You’re doing pretty damn good if you go undefeated in our league,” Staley said.
A win over Vanderbilt would be crucial for the Gamecocks. If South Carolina beats Vanderbilt, the teams would be tied for first in the SEC, giving USC the tiebreaker if both teams were to win out this season.
The Gamecocks would have a slight advantage to do so, as the toughest matchups remaining on their schedule project to be at home vs. Tennessee and on the road vs. LSU (4-2 SEC) and Kentucky (4-3 SEC). Meanwhile, Vanderbilt still has to play Kentucky twice, Oklahoma, Texas and Tennessee.
How to watch South Carolina vs. Vanderbilt WBB
- Who: No. 2 South Carolina (19-2, 5-1 SEC) vs. No. 5 Vanderbilt (20-0, 6-0 SEC)
- When: Sunday, Jan. 25 at 3 p.m.
- Where: Colonial Life Arena in Columbia, South Carolina
- TV: ESPN (Courtney Lyle, Carolyn Peck)
