Feb. 23, 2007
By Will Matthews
NASHVILLE – When Vanderbilt senior forward Carla Thomas rolled her ankle toward the end of the Commodores’ practice Wednesday night, she wasn’t sure she would be well enough to take the floor Thursday on Senior Night against No. 7 LSU.
But in what can only be seen as exemplary of the kind of work ethic that Thomas and her two fellow seniors – guards Dee Davis and Caroline Williams – have brought to the Vanderbilt program during their prolific collegiate careers, Thomas spent the night Wednesday in the trainer’s room doing whatever she could to get well enough to go.
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“And when I woke up this morning the swelling had gone down. Somehow it had gone down and it was exciting to see.”
And it was a good thing for Vanderbilt that it did, as the Commodores wouldn’t have been able to come out on top on a memorable Senior Night without Thomas’ presence Thursday.
Thomas teamed with Williams and Davis to hit big shot after big shot down the stretch and literally will the Commodores to a 68-58 win over LSU in the trio’s final regular season home game at Memorial Gym.
Thomas, clearly hobbled all night by her gimpy ankle, nonetheless poured in 23 points on 11 of 16 shooting from the floor – including her first career three-point basket – in 32 minutes of action.
“It was mental, just trying to get past those first couple of minutes,” Thomas said. “Everyone put so much time and effort and energy into trying to get me better for today because they knew how badly I wanted to play. So I just say thank you to everyone that was praying and everyone that stayed up all night trying to get me better.”
Davis scored 17 points and handed out eight assists, and Williams added 12 points on a night that belonged to the seniors both on and off the court.
“All of us did some different things,” Williams said. “Carla hit a huge shot. Dee hit a huge shot. Carla hit multiple huge shots, actually. All of us, I think, looked at it as a time that we needed to take over and we did.”
For Thomas, there could have been no better way to cap her career at Memorial Gym.
“It was just amazing to be a part of tonight,” Thomas said. “It was amazing to be on the court with Dee and Caroline and have the sense that this is our last time out here and to just enjoy it and to take as much out of it as we could.”
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As has been the case for Vanderbilt all year long, it was a total team effort Thursday with sophomore forward Christina Wirth hitting four huge three-pointers that ignited the seniors in the second half and grabbing five rebounds. And Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb credited a renewed defensive intensity after the break for enabling her team to be in position to hold off LSU in a game that was deadlocked at 33 at halftime.
But Balcomb, too, acknowledged that the story of the night was the inspired play of her seniors.
“It was so fun to watch them look at each other out on the floor and say `Let’s finish this.’ Caroline kept saying, `Let’s put them away.’ They were so confident and their body language was so positive you could just feel that they were going to finish it.”
The fact that they did leaves Vanderbilt tied for second in the SEC and, with only Sunday’s game at Tennessee left on their conference slate, in prime position to get a bye in the first round of next week’s SEC tournament.
“We started 3-3 in the conference and you look at it then and you say, `Man, there are a lot of good teams that we are looking up at.’ But our seniors took everything to heart that we taught them and everything that we worked on to improve and they didn’t get down. They just said `Okay, let’s make a run. Let’s run the table.’ And those were Caroline’s quotes after we were 3-3. She said `Let’s run the table. We have to.’ They know. They understand the sense of urgency in this conference.”
