Last night, I stumbled upon an interview with coach Ralph from last fall where she was asked to assess the team she inherited when she arrived in Nashville. She made no excuses and had nothing negative to say, but it jogged my memory about just how far this program had fallen.
We all remember the covid-shortened 1920-21 season when Vandy stopped playing basketball because of injuries and sickness after only eight games. They were down to eight players, and coming events would show they were not necessarily eight happy players.
At the end of the season, three starters, Koi Love, Chelsie Hall and Autumn Newby (who sat out the ’21 season due to covid concerns), transferred. A few months prior, AD Candace Lee had announced coach Stephanie White would return for another season, but the exit of the three players listed above, along with rumored unhappiness among remaining players, led to coach White’s firing. Enter Shea Ralph.
Of the players that eventually settled into the starting lineup for coach Ralph, only one, senior Brinae Alexander, played a single minute of college basketball the season before, and she only played in five games. Alexander had played in only 12 games since her freshman year. Jordyn Cambridge and Kaylon Smith were out with injuries the year before, and the other two starters were freshmen Sacha Washington and Iyanna Moore. The players were so far behind physically that the first five of the eight-week summer program were spent on strength and conditioning just so they could get to the point they could handle normal practice the final three weeks.
Why rehash all this? Looking back from a distance last night, it really struck me that, keeping in mind how tough the schedule was, there was no way this team should have wound up with a 16-19 record and won two games in the WNIT. No way.
They were too small, turnover prone and very limited offensively. And, frankly, they were pretty limited in talent at some positions. They did it with an all-out, kamikaze-style defense that disrupted a lot of bigger, faster, stronger and more talented teams. This style should not work in college. You don’t see it very often.
For one thing, it’s exhausting. For another, it’s really easy to defeat if your opponents get the ball to the right places on the floor and keep the ball moving. You should get easy shots against this style of defense, and as the season wore on, that happened more often. Coach Ralph noted after the MTSU loss to end the season that they could no longer surprise teams with the defense, and opponents came in more prepared to handle it. Still, it is a tribute to the desire and toughness of this squad that it still worked at times, or that it ever worked at all, really.
A big part of the success came from having Jordyn Cambridge, the undeniable team leader, who is that rarest of rare college basketball player: She absolutely loves playing defense. It wasn’t a grind for her, she enjoyed it, and she pulled the rest of the team along with her. A lot of it was just pure toughness. After three knee surgeries and wearing a brace, Cambridge attacked the game with a gusto that reminded many of…well…Shea Ralph, who, as a player, never saw a tussle she didn’t want to stick her nose into in spite of five knee surgeries. Tough doesn’t begin to describe Shea Ralph…or Jordyn Cambridge.
So, 16-19, how good was it? Considering all the above and other factors too numerous to go into, it was remarkable. But, looking at the way several games ended, including the season-ending loss at MTSU and the loss to Florida in round two of the SEC tourney where they blew a double-digit lead in the fourth quarter, I’d bet Shea Ralph was not happy with that record.
She still has a long way to go to build this program, and it’s going to take a few years to do, but I think she will get it done. She has proven she can do a lot with not much talent. The trick now is to upgrade that talent.
(Please forgive my long-winded ramblings. I love talking Vandy women's basketball, and I have no one to talk to about it, so I talk to myself. I've become a good listener.
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