River Baldwin's emergence continues as No. 5 NC State women's basketball beats Vanderbilt
RALEIGH – NC State lived up to its No. 5 ranking Wednesday, dealing Vanderbilt its first loss of the season, 70-62 in the inaugural ACC/SEC Challenge.
Saniya Rivers continued her outstanding play with a game-high 22 points and eight rebounds, leading the Wolfpack (8-0) to its best start since the 2020-21 season that ended in the Sweet 16.
Another Wolfpack contributor has emerged in River Baldwin. Coming off WSWBA National Player of the Week honors for her Paradise Jam Island Tournament MVP performance, the 6-foot-5 center posted 12 points and 10 boards with two blocks against the Commodores.
Baldwin said something clicked for her at the three-game showcase in US Virgin Islands, which culminated with her 24-point performance in a victory over then-No. 3 Colorado. "If I play defense, buy into the scout, do what the coaches are asking and rebound, points will come or they won't. I don't really care as long as we get the W," she said after Wednesday's win.
The added scoring threat that Baldwin has become opens up NC State's offense, giving its drive-and-dish or drive-and-finish guards more freedom. Two of those guards — Aziaha James and freshman Zoe Brooks — finished with 14 and 10 points, respectively. Brooks also tallied a team-high four assists and four steals.
North Carolina Commodore
Vanderbilt (7-1) had been off to its best start since the 2011-12 season when it won its first 10 games.
The Commodores are coached by Fayetteville native and former national high school player of the year out of Terry Sanford, Shea Ralph. Now in her third season leading Vanderbilt, Ralph spent 14 years on Geno Auriemma’s bench at her alma mater UConn, where she led the Huskies to the NCAA championship in 2000 as a first-team All-American and national player of the year.
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'Embarrassing' 4th quarter
Rivers had 15 points in the first half as the Wolfpack doubled up Vanderbilt’s rebounding 26-13 after two quarters, and its nine-point halftime lead ballooned to 26 with 8:07 remaining in the game.
But the Commodores fought back, finishing on a 12-2 run to cut that deficit to single digits.
"I'd rather learn from a win any day," Rivers said. "But we blew a 26-point lead in the fourth quarter. It's embarrassing."
Wolfpack coach Wes Moore compared his team's fourth-quarter performance to "playing pick-up over at Carmichael," giving credit to Vanderbilt for getting the Pack out of rhythm.
"We've got to learn about time and score, clock management, those sort of things," Moore said. "They outhustled us in a lot of ways ... They got after us."
Wolf at the door
Coming off a disappointing 20-12 season with a 9-9 record in the ACC and losing four starters from that squad, expectations weren’t exactly high for the Wolfpack outside of its own locker room heading into 2023-34.
But that changed dramatically by the second game of the season.
Unranked in the AP Top 25 and predicted to finish eighth in the ACC, NC State made a convincing statement and fed its fan base thoroughly with a double-figure win over No. 2 UConn on Nov. 12 and less than two weeks later the Pack had another high-profile victory, beating No. 3 Colorado to complete a three-game Paradise Jam sweep.
Those big wins have the Pack ranked No. 5 in the AP Top 25 this week, behind No. 1 South Carolina, No. 2 UCLA, No. 3 Stanford and No. 4 Iowa. It's the first time in AP women's basketball poll history a team started the season unranked and reached the top five by the end of November.
Up next
The Wolfpack hits the court again Sunday, hosting Illinois State (5-1) at 1 p.m. (ACC Network).
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: NC State women's basketball beats Vanderbilt Saniya Rivers Shea Ralph
