The NCAA women's tournament selection committee has never let an opportunity for rematch, rehash, or reunion pass them by. When the bracket was released on Sunday, it was no surprise to see a rather cinematic Elite Eight meeting set up in the Fort Worth 1 region, something in the vein of Obi-Wan vs. Darth Vader. The circle is now complete.
When former Huskies point guard Shea Ralph left UConn's bench in 2021 after 13 seasons as Geno Auriemma's assistant, she was but the learner. Now she is the master. Her second-seeded Vanderbilt Commodores, ranked No. 6 in the AP polls, set school records for regular-season and SEC wins this year. They were the darling of the conference award ballots. Ralph won SEC Coach of the Year, and her young starting backcourt got some shine, too: Sophomore scorer Mikayla Blakes won SEC Player of the Year and point guard Aubrey Galvan was named SEC Freshman of the Year.
Well before the bracket announcement, the two coaches had been pulled onto the same campaign trail by the star sophomores at the helm of each team. Blakes is a daring and speedy guard who moves with a kind of wobbly endurance, like her long limbs are coming unscrewed from the rest of her body. (Her whistle, in some games, is astonishing.) Galvan's presence this year has let Blakes focus on what she does best: catch, get set, and shoot in a single motion. Coupled with the fact that she’s one of the better off-ball movers in college basketball, she gets great shots off with ease.
Blakes's 27 points per game lead the country in scoring. "Prove me wrong, that that’s not the SEC Player of the Year and the National Player of the Year," Ralph said after her guard's 34-point performance in an 86-70 win against a stingy Texas defense in February. The Longhorns, for their part, have tipped their caps, too. "Player of the year, for sure," Texas forward Madison Booker, an ostensible competitor for SEC Player of the Year, said in a recent interview with Lisa Leslie. "She’s hard to guard."
The Commodores will begin the tournament with a slightly bitter taste in their mouths, a quarterfinal loss to Ole Miss in the SEC Tournament earlier this month. (Ralph was ejected from that game for barking at a ref.) But more importantly, they’re beginning the tournament at home. As a top-4 seed, the Commodores host first- and second-round games in Nashville, playing 15th-seeded High Point on Saturday. Ralph was long considered a favorite candidate to replace Auriemma when he retired, but she’s built something impressive at Vanderbilt. "People are scheduling their entire lives around Vandy games now," one fan told The Guardian.
"Whatever I've got, she's got it," Auriemma said after the bracket was announced, inevitably asked about his former assistant. To be sure, the old man's powers aren't weak. A No. 1 overall seed for the 15th time in program history, UConn enters the tournament undefeated and armed with (to my mind) the best player in college basketball: Sarah Strong, the betting favorite to edge out Blakes for National Player of the Year. Strong’s sheer lack of weakness has frightened teammates and opponents alike since she first showed up in Storrs as a freshman last fall. She's an all-levels scorer, a gifted rebounder, and an unassuming but great passer. South Carolina head coach Dawn Staley even suggested at last year's Final Four that Strong might go down as the greatest UConn player ever when her college career is over.
Having spent so many years at a perennially stacked institution, Ralph and Auriemma have lots of experience in the trickiest part of coaching: how to handle game-changing talent. The way Ralph tells it, she might object to the focus of this blog. "Most of the time, coaches—we can only screw things up," Ralph said on the Hoops 360 podcast in February. "We get in the way. We get in the way of greatness. We want to overcoach, and it’s not about us." That may be true, but they'll be hard to ignore if their teams meet in this year's tournament.
