Why Shea Ralph hopes Vanderbilt women's basketball can make NCAA Tournament after dominant opener

Vanderbilt women's basketball got its third season-opening win in three years under coach Shea Ralph on Monday, defeating Kennesaw State, 98-51, at Memorial Gymnasium.

Sacha Washington led all scorers with 16 as five Commodores finished in double figures. Vanderbilt (1-0) also forced 24 turnovers and had 22 assists, with six players recording two or more assists.

After playing with just eight players last season, Vanderbilt didn't see a single player exceed 23 minutes, a welcome sight.

In their first games back after missing the 2022-23 season with injury, guards Jordyn Cambridge and Iyana Moore didn't miss a beat.

Cambridge looked every bit the two-time SEC All-Defensive Team honoree, with five steals to go along with 11 points, seven assists and four rebounds in just 21 minutes. Moore scored 11 points and hit two 3-pointers in 19 minutes.

Justine Pissott also scored 12 points off the bench for the Commodores.

Press to success

Ralph said prior to the start of the season that she hoped to press more on defense, and press the Commodores did.

For most of the game, Vanderbilt played four guards, preferring some combination of Cambridge, Jordyn Oliver, Moore, Pissott and freshman Madison Greene, with Washington and Khamil Pierre playing in the post.

With so many capable guards both offensively and defensively, the Commodores were able to mix-and-match within the system. Though Vanderbilt still lacks physicality relative to most SEC teams, the press will put pressure on opposing teams that lack the same level of ball-handling.

"I love it," Cambridge said. "Anyone that knows me knows that defense is just my thing, and I feel like when we're playing really good defense, the energy is high. When the energy is high, the offense is going to come. We have a lot of great threats on offense. So I'm not really worried about that. We have people who can make plays, make shots, when we're playing defense, we're going to be a hard team to play against."

Newcomers prove worth

Vanderbilt added two high-profile transfers in the offseason with Oliver from Duke and Pissott from Tennessee. Although both players were McDonald's All-Americans in high school, neither has a particularly long track record of college performance.

So far, so good for the duo. Oliver scored just eight points but went 4-for-5 from the field with four rebounds and two assists. She was fourth on the team in plus-minus at 28. Pissott made three 3-pointers.

"I'm really excited about those two, in particular, because they both came from winning programs, and they're winners and they understand what it looks like to compete and play in the NCAA Tournament," Ralph said. "That's what we want to do. That's our goal this year. I've been pretty clear about that. ... So for them to be able to come in and talk about what it takes to do that, for them to bring that experience to us is great."

Ralph still unsatisfied

It wasn't a perfect performance for the Commodores, which saw one weakness from last season come to light again: rebounding. Vanderbilt was out-rebounded as a whole, 42-39. A lot of that came in the fourth quarter when Washington and Cambridge were on the bench, but Ralph still emphasized the importance of improving there.

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"They did dribble by us too many times," Ralph said. "They got in the paint a lot. They weren't able to connect on most of their shots, but because our rotations weren't always there, we did get out-rebounded and I know a lot of that was in the fourth quarter, but it still can happen. So there's there's ways that we can clean up our pressure. There's ways we can clean up how we're playing defense in the halfcourt. If we want to be aggressive, we have to do it with intelligence"

Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on Twitter @aria_gerson.

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This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Vanderbilt women's basketball dominant in opener: What we learned