NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Christina Wirth had just played the game of a lifetime. Facing sixth-ranked Auburn in the championship game of the 2009 SEC Tournament, Wirth led all scorers with 20 points.
She hit the 3-pointer that gave Vanderbilt its first lead and the jumper that later gave her team a lead it never again relinquished. She hit back-to-back back-breaking 3-pointers in the span of a minute in the second half. And with the Tigers frantically mounting a final charge, she came up with the steal that iced Vanderbilt’s sixth tournament title.
All without ever coming out of the game. All while handling interior defensive duties as a decidedly undersized post. All while playing her third game in as many days in North Little Rock, Arkansas.
No wonder she was named the tournament’s MVP, capping a decade of dominance in which Vanderbilt student-athletes won that honor on five occasions.
From Auburn coach Nell Fortner to Wirth’s coaches and teammates to a national television audience, anyone who witnessed it came away impressed. Well, almost anyone.
“If you look at the stats, I didn’t shoot well at all, to be honest,” Wirth noted afterward. “I did hit some shots and my teammates found me a few 3s at clutch times in the game, but it was a complete team effort.”
Wirth arrived at Vanderbilt with star credentials, a McDonald’s All-American and member of the American team that rolled to a title in the 2005 FIBA Under-19 World Championship. But joining a team already led by the likes of Carla Thomas, she willingly played her part in an ensemble that won 49 games and the 2007 SEC Tournament in her first two seasons.
That’s the thing about Wirth; she didn’t need a spotlight to do it all. A dead-eye shooter who ranks fourth in Vanderbilt history in 3-point accuracy and 11th in scoring, she earned first-team All-SEC honors in each of her final two seasons and honorable mention All-America honors as a senior. Drafted by the WNBA’s Indiana Fever, she played professionally in the United States and overseas. Off the court, she was the 2009 SEC Women’s Basketball Scholar Athlete of the Year, a member of the All-SEC Community Service team, finalist for the Lowe’s Senior CLASS Award and NCAA postgraduate scholarship recipient.
She made it all look easy. Perhaps the only thing that didn’t come naturally? Being the center of attention. But for Vanderbilt to be its best in her final season, the Commodores needed Wirth to lead them there.
Like everything else she did, she turned out to be pretty good at it. She averaged 16.6 points per game as a senior, at that time the second-best for any Commodore since Chantelle Anderson. And by leading her team to SEC glory and the Sweet 16, she finished her Vanderbilt career with 100 wins, one of just nine Commodores to reach the century mark.
“A lot of times I take a lot of the shots,” Wirth continued after the 2009 title game. “I remember one time early on in the season coach talking to me and saying, ‘You’re being selfish if you don’t take those shots.’ A lot of people say you’re selfish if you shoot 20 times a game, but she told me for the team to be successful, that’s what I needed to do.”
