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Sky High Points | Vanderbilt Athletics
We are in the Round of 32 for the first time since 2013 thanks in part to a 30-point, single-season record-setting performance by Mikayla Blakes and double-doubles from both Sacha Washington (10pt/17reb) and Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda (10pts/11reb). The real highlight is that our three highest-minute players (Blakes, Aubrey Galvan, and Justine Pissott) all played their fewest minutes in a game since mid-January in a sort of walkover of High Point that started with a 17-2 run and never saw us look back.
Meanwhile, Illinois and Colorado fought all the way to the end of their game, demanding more out of the Illini than we demanded out of our players. This has been the story for Illinois since they lost one of their best players in Gretchen Dolan in February. They don’t seem to have fallen off much since losing Dolan, but the minutes the end of the bench has played has not increased, either: The Illini have effectively been playing as a 6-woman team since the start of February. If one of those players gets in foul trouble early, and the Illini average around 18 a game which is not that many to spread around on 6 players, we could see them flounder fast against our larger shared effort.
Focusing on individual players, Berry “Strawberry” Wallace and Cearah “Scrolls” Parchment both act as dual 6-foot-plus anchors for the team, scoring big and bringing down boards, mixing in a healthy number of 3-point attempts. They are all-around players but leave more of the passing to Destiny Jackson, who recorded a double-double (16pts/11reb) against Colorado despite not normally being the one going for boards. These 3 players make up the heart of the team, and all 3 seem to be very well-rounded. Scrolling through their game logs, it’s worth noting that there is no correlation between foul numbers and minutes, meaning that we’ll probably see Illinois keep these players out no matter what happens (contradicts what I said above but whatever). If we can find a way to stay on top of any of these three, I think we’ll hamstring Illinois enough to win this game.
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