VU vs. WVU Recap: Vandy Survives “The Pit”, Moves On to Sweet Sixteen
March 24th 2008
Give West Virginia credit: after one of the toughest first round games of the NCAA tournament, the Mountaineers hung with Vanderbilt through more than half of their matchup last night before mental and physical fatigue took over, and they eventually fell to the Commodores 64-46. Christina Wirth led the way for Vandy, scoring 21 points in 40 minutes of play. Wirth was the only Commodore to go the distance, connecting on 4-of-7 three pointers and 3-of-3 inside the arc, with two of those shots counted as “twos” because only the tip of her sneaker was on the line. West Virginia countered Vanderbilt fairly well, but they didn’t have an answer for Wirth, who was named player of the game.
It was a game of streaks, with Vanderbilt going up 11-2 and then 15-7 before they went cold, and West Virginia came storming back with a 15-2 run of their own to take a 24-18 lead. The rest of the first half was back and forth, and the Mountaineers entered the famous tunnel at “The Pit” with a 29-27 advantage. As I watched the Mountaineers running up the steep incline to head to the locker rooms, passing the Vanderbilt players who were walking, I noticed something interesting: Jen Risper, the hardest working Commodore and undisputed heart and soul of this team, was running too, and the rest of the Commodores followed suit and picked up the pace. This is indicative of what Risper means to this team: she gives 110% to everything she does, and she inspires her teammates to do the same, whether it’s hustling for every ball or jogging to the locker room.
The halftime stats were telling: VU had won the battle of the boards, with a distinctive 21-8 rebounding advantage over WV, but had committed 15 first half turnovers, which the Mountaineers had exploited for 11 points. West Virginia had been dominating from outside the arc, connecting on 5-of-11 3-pointers, so Vanderbilt coach Melanie Balcomb made two things a priority in the second half: shut down their outside shooters and take care of the ball on offense. Balcomb felt like Vandy had gone from fast to faster on offense, and she wanted them to slow it down a little and mix up the pace.
A good team heeds the advice of their coach, and that’s exactly what happened in the second half. The Commodores limited the Mountaineers to only 1-of-7 shooting from 3-point range in the second 20, and the Commodores took better care of the ball, committing only 7 turnovers the rest of the game. But probably the most telling factor of the game was conditioning. Balcomb stated that it looked like West Virginia seemed to “hit the wall” at about the 8-minute mark of the second half, where the Mountaineers had their heads down and were just walking. Vanderbilt took notice and it got the Commodores even more pumped up. Christina Wirth stated: “We could see that they were tired. We are in great shape. We thanked our strength and conditioning coach in the locker room for getting us ready. The stuff that you do in the off-season, all the conditioning doesn’t seem fun at the time, really is paying off now. I think that our team realizes that that we are in great shape and we can run hard and play hard for 40 minutes. I think that is hard to hang with for other teams.” Sophomore Jessica Mooney came off the bench to score 11, and the Vanderbilt bench outscored West Virginia’s 20-2. Liz Sherwood, who normally sparks the Commodores on offense when she comes into the game, came in and did a nice job of defense on Oyalinka Sanni, limiting the all-Big East center to 14 points, 3 below her average. Meg Bulger added 13 and LaQuita Owens had 10 for WV. The Mountaineers finished their season with a 25-8 record.
Vanderbilt moves on to the Sweet Sixteen in Spokane, WA where they will meet the winner of tonight’s Nebraska/Maryland matchup. This is the Commodores 13th Sweet Sixteen appearance in 21 years in the NCAA tournament.