Vandy women's basketball 2

Jordyn Cambridge

 Photo courtesy of Vanderbilt Athletics

The Vanderbilt women’s basketball team is headed to the NCAA Tournament for the first time in a decade.

The Commodores (22-9) are the No. 12 seed in Regional 3 in Portland, and will take on Columbia in a play-in contest at Cassell Coliseum in Blacksburg, Va. The winner of that game will face fifth-seeded Baylor in the first round at Cassell Coliseum. Dates and time will be released later.

Vandy will be making its 28th trip to the tournament, but first since 2013-14, when the eighth-seeded Commodores fell to No. 9 Arizona State 69-61 in Toledo, Ohio.

“[I feel] ... joy for our program, for our team, especially some of our veterans who have said this was their goal all along since we got here, the first week on the job,” Commodores coach Shea Ralph said Sunday. “We are in the tournament. We’re so excited. We’re so thrilled to be competing. We’re so proud to be representing Vanderbilt and our conference.”

The ‘Dores have 22 wins this year under Ralph, marking the first time Vandy has recorded a 20-win season since 2012-13.  Vanderbilt went 9-7 in Southeastern Conference play, finishing sixth, after being projected to finish 13th by the media.

In 2021, Ralph took over a program that hadn’t recorded a winning record in five straight seasons under Stephanie White and had failed to post a winning SEC mark since 2012-13.

“For our program, it just means we’re going in the right direction,” Ralph said. “We came here to compete for championships and I’ve said that from the very beginning. I mean that. I want my team to understand that’s who we are and that’s how we should act, practice, travel, represent ourselves. We want to be champions. We want a championship mindset. We want a championship culture.”

Vandy appeared to be moving toward securing an NCAA Tournament berth with three straight wins to close the regular season. But the Commodores lost their first game in the SEC Tournament, prompting some nervous moments for Ralph and her players as they watched the NCAA Tournament selection show on Sunday.

“I wasn’t [anxious] until I sat down and then I watched team after team get called,” Ralph said. “When you start going through all the names and you don’t hear your name called, you start to kind of count on your fingers like, `Okay, who’s left? And who’s left in our conference? What are the automatic bids? What are the chances that X, Y, and Z [happen],’ knowing it does no good.

“But I’m a human being just like everybody else. What I felt was anxiousness for my players … This is a moment hopefully they’ll never forget.”

Vanderbilt has a NET ranking of 56, one spot higher than Columbia (23-6) of the Ivy League. The Commodores went 0-3 against top-25 opponents this year, while the Lions were 1-0.

The Commodores beat Columbia 74-63 during the regular season in 2022-23, but Ralph said both teams have changed quite a bit since then. Columbia had won 11 straight games before losing 75-58 to Princeton in the Ivy League Tournament final on Saturday.

Guard Iyana Moore leads Vandy with a 13.9 points-per-game average, followed by forward Sacha Washington (12.1 points, 7.9 rebounds), while guard Jordyn Cambridge — an Ensworth High alum in her sixth year — averages 12 points, six rebounds, 4.4 assists and 3.6 steals per contest.

This story was first published by our sister publication Nashville Post.