Red-Hot UW Has Tough Test Plays Tournament-Tested Vandy In Opening Round Of Ncaas
Vanderbilt coach Jim Foster, approaching his sixth straight women’s NCAA Tournament opener tonight, was reluctant to describe the personality of the 20th-ranked team in college basketball.
“I’m not sure,” he said Friday. “It’s still evolving.”
After a pause, he elaborated:
“We could learn to play harder. I think they’ve gotta be a little nastier. They’re very nice kids. We play in a very aggressive league. For 40 minutes sometimes you don’t need to be nice.”
Whether the Commodores are nasty or nice could be decisive in their NCAA West Regional opener in Allen Fieldhouse against the underdog University of Washington.
It’s an intriguing matchup of underachievers vs. overachievers. Consider:
Vanderbilt was a consensus top 10 team in the preseason rankings but had a lackluster 18-10 season, finishing in the middle of the Southeastern Conference standings.
Washington has overcome adversity to join the NCAA Tournament elite with a determined late-season streak, winning eight of its last 10 games.
The Nashville school’s program, one of the college game’s finest, hasn’t lost in NCAA first- and second-round games under Foster’s leadership, eight straight over five seasons.
The Commodores have size and depth. Yet for the most part, this season has been a disappointment.
After a sizzling start in which they won 12 of their first 14 games, Vanderbilt reversed those numbers in the second half of the season and arrive here with four losses in six games.
The Huskies are seeded 11th in the region, while Vandy is sixth.
UW coach June Daugherty is hardly dismayed, despite losing Amber Hall, the Pac-10’s leading rebounder, with a broken right ankle three weeks ago in the Stanford game.
“When that happened to be honest I was concerned about the team,” Daugherty said. “I was heartbroken to see her, the fifth-leading rebounder in the country, as confident and as effective she has become, go down. I wasn’t sure how we were going to rebound and get turned around inside.”
But the Huskies went on a roll.
The UW women blitzed UCLA and USC in the final weekend to send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to the NCAA selection committee.
“If you’d told me we would go to USC against their tall, athletic talent and outrebound them 50 to 38 without Amber Hall, I’d ask you what you had in your coffee in the morning,” Daugherty said.
Vanderbilt’s versatility could be a problem.
“It’s their size and their depth,” she said. “We can’t let one area of their game go completely ballistic and have a big night. We’ve got to keep them under control. They are so capable with that lineup, and anybody can step up and have a big night.”
The Vanderbilt defense will focus on containing Huskies scoring leader Jamie Redd (20.5 ppg) and senior Laure Savasta, who has been on a roll the past few weeks. Savasta scored 24 points in the regular-season finale last Sunday at USC.
“We’ve done a good job getting into the running game,” Daugherty said. “We ran a lot against USC and against Arizona.”
The Commodores’ starting center, Angela Gorsica, stands 6-foot-7 and is flanked by 6-2 forwards Na’Sheema Hillmon and Lisa Ostrom. The trio is tall, but the Huskies are less than intimidated.
This will be a major test for UW center Gena Pelz, the 6-2 junior from Charles City, Iowa, who stepped in to take over on the boards for Hall.
Hillmon, who leads Vanderbilt in scoring (12.3 ppg) and rebounding (8.6 rpg), and senior guard Michelle Palmisano were second-team All-SEC all-stars.
The 3-point shooting success of Palmisano and reserve guard Paige Redman ranks the Commodores No. 1 in the SEC in accuracy outside the arc. Defensively, Vandy led the league in scoring defense (59.9 ppg), defending 3-point shooting (26.3 percent) and blocked shots (5.5 bpg).