Our women’s team tips off their season with a game against Lipscomb on November 4th. I’m putting out these pre-season pieces in an attempt to get you all here at Anchor of Gold on the hype train early, because this season is set to start fast and not let up until deep into March. Last week I reviewed our 2023-2024 season and some of the offseason today, today I am running through our roster and personnel, and next week I am planning on getting a season preview up, and then the week after that we’ll have our first game thread of the year. Now go ahead and buckle up. This is a reeaaaallllll long one.
Who’s Gone?
We got to Blacksburg last year in part thanks to Jordyn “The Bionic Woman” Cambridge, who, after joining the program in 2018, went on to set both the program’s career and single-season records for steals, score 1,037 career points, and be named to the All-SEC defensive team in three different years before finally hanging it up at the end of the 2024 season. For the first time in six-and-a-half years, Vanderbilt will have to play basketball without Jordyn Cambridge on the sidelines.
We also lost Bella LaChance, who gave us a great four years, serving as a rock for the team during a transition period. She got her trip to the dance, graduated, and moved on to Furman for her last year of eligibility.
Ryanne Allen transferred to Villanova, which is like an hour from her listed hometown of Perkasie, Pennsylvania. Can’t really get mad at someone transferring to be closer to home, which I think is what this was. She also saw her playing time decrease dramatically in her second year, from 20+ minutes/game in 2022-23 to ~7 minutes/game in 2023-24. As we slowly attract more talent as a program, and also when we manage to stay healthy, some players may see their time decrease. Like I said, can’t blame her for transferring.
Bailey Gilmore transferred to Memphis after redshirting with us all year as well as refusing to travel with the team, supposedly to focus on academics. She never played a single minute, and then transferred to Memphis. If memory serves correctly, she announced she would be transferring the morning of the First Four game? Wish her the best, but that sure was a tacky thing to do.
Who’s Still Here?
We’ve got to start with Head Coach Shea Ralph, who just this past week received a well-deserved extension ahead of an SEC Tipoff interview in which she doubled down on her being here at Vanderbilt to stay. There’s not much new I can say here, but just know that extending her was certainly a no-brainer for us and whatever we paid her was worth it. She has completely reinvented the culture of the team and is setting us up incredibly well for the future both in the way she is recruiting and in the way she is handling transfers. That’s not to mention that she has coached us through some TOUGH games where without a disciplined squad and a good gameplan we would not have been able to come out on top. All-around great coach, and I’m glad to be riding with her for the foreseeable future.
As returning players go, it seems like Jordyn Oliver, Iyana Moore, Justine Pissot, and Sacha Washington will all start for us.
Former McDonald’s All-American Jordyn Oliver began her collegiate career at Baylor, transferred to Duke for two years, and finally transferred in to Vanderbilt last year as a graduate student. This should be her last year of eligibility between an injury redshirt year at Duke and her COVID year she earned as a freshman. Last season she started 23 of 33 games, appearing in all but one. She is pretty much always good for a 5/5/3 game or so, doing almost all her work near the rim. Didn’t go through and check ages, but I am about 99% sure she is the oldest player on the team and seems like she will be the sort of team leader this year, especially given her presence at SEC Tipoff. Occasionally she’ll get hot and will hit 3 or 4 layups in quick succession. Excited to see her play more, because I usually felt like she added something we were missing in a few games last year.
All-SEC second team member Iyana Moore has played her entire career at Vanderbilt and has one more year of eligibility after this one if I am correct in that her sophomore year (2022-23) that she sat out with injury doesn’t count against her. Last season she started all 33 games, averaging 14/4/3 in those games while going 83% from the line. I would expect our other Tipoff attendee’s averages to climb this year, especially the scoring number. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that she finishes the season as the SEC scoring champion after finishing with the 15th-highest point-per-game mark of anyone in the conference last season. Expect her to shoot from all over the court early and often.
Former McDonald’s All-American Justine Pissot is a true junior after transferring here last year following what I am certain was the worst year of her life at That School Out East Where They Drink With Their Butts. She played in all 33 games last year, starting in 28 of those. She is something of a three-point specialist, leading the team in shooting percentage from three, making 37% of attempts last year. Her big issue is that she is either very on or very off. She could go 5-6, 1-4, 2-6, 3-5, and then 0-3 in any given five-game stretch (yes, that is a real example). I’d expect her to get more minutes, and therefore more attempts, this year; I also expect her to continue to improve her percentages. She could end up wreaking serious havoc from beyond the arc if she finds a way to be a little more consistent while pushing up her overall accuracy even more. Would like to see her help out on defense a little bit more because she’s so tall, but you can’t get everything you want.
That brings us to Sacha “The Iron Woman” Washington who has played in all 99 Vanderbilt women’s basketball games since coming to campus in 2021, starting in 72 of those. She averaged a fairly consistent 12/8/1 last year, adding 44 blocks. Her free-throw percentage has gotten worse every year, so I am really hoping she can at least maintain her 62% from the line mark from last year because there were definitely moments where missed free throws got us in some trouble. She is a monster on the boards though, coming in at 114th in the country last year. She took a step forward in shooting percentage last year, moving up 7 percentage points from her first two years to 53% accuracy from the field, and I am hoping she can be even more accurate this year. She will be a great anchor in the paint for us on both sides of the court.
Outside of our likely starting returners, All-SEC Freshman Khamil Pierre will be looking to play some serious minutes coming off a season where she earned SEC Freshman of the Week honors for a school-record five different weeks. Across the entire last season she averaged 9/5/1 on 42% from the field, but that doesn’t tell the full story. If you throw out the non-conference slate where she averaged 16 minutes a game and focus just on the in-conference and postseason games where she averaged 23 minutes a game, she averaged closer to 11/7/1 on nearly the same percentage from the field. She took a huge step forward last year and if she continues to build on that she could end up one of the best players in the country before she graduates.
Madison Greene, Jada Brown, Aiyana Mitchell, and Aga Makurat are the final four returners this year.
True sophomore Aga Makurat appeared in all 33 games last year, starting in 3 of them while averaging 4/2/1 on 34%. I remember thinking “Oh yeah, she’s pretty good I guess.” If I remember correctly, and looking at her stats this seems to be true, she is sort of a three-and-D type player, taking about 70% of he shots from three while bringing in 1 or maybe 2 defensive boards a game. I wouldn’t expect her to start often unless she’s taken a big step forward in shooting, but she’s definitely a good player to have around.
True sophomore Aiyana Mitchell appeared in 15 games last year, scoring in seven of them. Most of her minutes seemed to come in garbage time, where she usually would come in and score maybe one basket and maybe grab a board or three. She’s listed at 6’4, which is tall enough I’d expect at least a little something out of her against the non-conference slate if for no other reason than most of the teams we play early in the season will not have that many women that are that tall. Don’t really have clear expectations for her going into the season, though.
True junior Jada Brown, just looking at the stats, didn’t do much for us. She seems like she may be here to play school given her academic profile coming out of high school and her being a two-time honoree on the SEC Academic Honor Roll. I don’t really have any clear memories of her playing time last season. She seems fine enough, occasionally coming in to pull down a few boards for us, but I am not expecting to see too much of her this year.
Sophomore Madison Greene averaged 7/2/1 on 43% before suffering a season-ending injury against Lipscomb. She was playing a lot of minutes before that, and doing pretty well, so I would expect her to get decent time assuming she’s recovered well. Interestingly, her injury may be why Khamil Pierre was able to earn more playing time in the second half of the season. I don’t really remember much about Madison but hope she will be able to contribute coming back from that injury. She could be the most interesting of this group of four as long as she is recovering well.
Who’s New?
As for new faces, we’ve got a pair of recruits coming in: Mikayla Blakes and Trinity Wilson. Mikayla was a top-10 national recruit, McDonald’s All-American, and New Jersey Gatorade Player of the Year. She was also a 4.0 student at Rutgers Prep. Mikayla is an insane signing. She is the next step in what Coach Shea Ralph is slowly but surely building here. Trinity Wilson, daughter of former national champion UConn player Brenda Marquis, won’t be quite the level I would expect Mikayla Blakes to be right out of the gate, but she is still a great recruit with a serious ability to score (and being 6’3 is never a bad thing, either).
Looking at transfers in, let’s start with four-time Pepperdine Scholar-Athlete of the Year and All-WCC Honorable Mentionee Jane Nwaba. She averaged 11/8/3 last year while playing 31 minutes a game, all of which led the Waves in her final year in Malibu. I don’t know much about her or any of the other transfers, but she seems like a good all-around player aside from shooting below 60% from the line last year. Not much of a threat from three, but she will definitely be a contributor on offense.
Our other transfer, Two-Time All-Big Ten Defensive Team selection Leilani Kapinus (Cap-n-Is per the mother site) seemingly would have set every defensive counting stat record at Penn State had she not had to redshirt her freshman year due to injury. She averaged 12/7/2 last year on 58% shooting from the field. And don’t think just because she’s a defender that she can’t knock down a three every now and again: she went 25-of-61 last year across 35 games. I am super excited to see what she adds to the team off the bench, assuming her usual role will be subbing in for Sacha or maybe Jordyn to sustain our defense when the starters need a break. Great pickup for depth.
What Else?
SEC Tipoff took place this past week, which saw the release of the TV schedule and the preseason media poll.
Starting with the TV schedule before we dive into the poll, we are scheduled to play Alabama A&M on SEC Network on December 29th at noon, at LSU on SEC Network on January 13th at 7PM, at Alabama on January 26th at 2PM, at Texas on February 6th at 9PM?!?!, against Mississippi State on February 13th at 9PM (again?), and at Auburn on February 16th at 4PM. Additionally, the Dores will play on TruTV in the Acrisure Classic against Arizona on November 26th at 3:30PM and again against the winner of Cal–Michigan State on November 27th at either 1PM or 3:30PM depending on the results of the first game. Finally, the ACC/SEC Challenge game at Miami on December 4th at 4PM will air on ACC Network. All other games will be viewable on SEC Network+. The conference tournament will be aired on a combination of SEC Network and ESPN2, with the championship game being shown on Big Boy ESPN.
As for the poll, we were picked to finish tenth. This sort of feels right: we finished sixth in the conference last year, Texas and Oklahoma are probably both better teams than we are, and Kentucky’s transfer class (their new coach Kenny Brooks brought over Clara Strack and Georgia Amoore, someone who definitely would have been drafted had she declared, from Virginia Tech while also recruiting away a load of talent from other schools) all feel like legitimate reasons to push us down the list. This poll released just before Florida’s star player Aliyah Matharu entered the portal as a graduate transfer, where she hopes to join a new program and begin playing by December. I plan on looking at the conference in a little more detail next week, but for now somewhere around 7-9 seems right for us.
Looking ahead, I’m not expecting any other news to break between now and the start of the season. HOWEVER, I didn’t really expect that last week either and then we got the contract extension and the Matharu transfer news. Goes to show anything can happen. See you next week when I look ahead to the coming season with a specific focus on the new-look Southeastern Conference.
