March 3, 2007
Visit Vanderbilt’s SEC Tournament Central Site for Complete Commodore Coverage
Game Recap: Vanderbilt 105 Florida 77
Doing What it Did Friday Won’t Cut It Come Saturday
By Will Matthews
DULUTH, Ga. – The Stat sheet after the first 20 minutes of Vanderbilt’s 105-77 quarterfinal win over Florida Friday was astounding, even for Vanderbilt’s lofty offensive standards.
Senior guard Caroline Williams was a perfect 5 for 5 from the field, including 4 of 4 from three-point range. Sophomore forward Christina Wirth also didn’t miss a shot in the first half, hitting all five of her field goal attempts, including all three of her three-point shots.
 |
|
As a team, the Commodores shot a whopping 70.4 percent from the field as a team in the first half, hit on seven of their eight attempts from three-point range and hung 54 points on an upstart Gator team that was coming off an emotional upset of Mississippi State in Thursday’s first round.
For the game, Vanderbilt shot 66 percent from the field, 73.3 percent from long distance and became the first team since 1998 to break the century mark in an SEC Tournament game.
But rather than celebrate her team’s offensive exploits, Vanderbilt Head Coach Melanie Balcomb chose instead to kick off her post-game press conference by addressing the Commodores’ defensive effort.
“I think when you score a lot of points a lot of people are impressed,” Balcomb said. “But I think that one of the things that we were disappointed with was our defense – cutting off the drive and checking out. Those are two of the things that we better bring [Saturday].”
Balcomb is well aware that Vanderbilt, now 25-5 overall and ranked 13th in the country, will face a much stiffer test Saturday in the tournament semifinals when the Commodores will be forced to do battle against No. 10 Georgia, a team that finished second in the SEC during the regular season and which put forth a tremendous defensive effort in routing a solid Kentucky team 72-40 earlier Friday afternoon.
Even as prolific a shooting team as Vanderbilt is- the team finished the regular season third in the nation in overall field goal percentage – the Commodores cannot be expected to pour in 100 points against Georgia, making how they play on the defensive end Saturday the key to whether they live to play more basketball Sunday.
“Everyone on their team is playing really, really well,” Balcomb said. “They are executing as well as anybody I have seen. They are running a lot of stuff and executing it well. And I think we are going to have to do a much better job defensively and take them out of what they want to do. We are going to have to dictate more on defense.”
Yet for as strong as their defensive effort will need to be Saturday, the Commodores will also have to continue to, as Wirth put it after Friday’s win, “do what we do” – and what this Vanderbilt team does when it is successful is shoot the lights out.
After a sub-par shooting performance to close the regular season last Sunday in a lopsided loss at Tennessee, Wirth said their shooting performance Friday against Florida will allow the team to regain the kind of confidence shooting the ball that they have had all year heading into Saturday’s game with Georgia.
“After the Tennessee game we were disappointed, obviously,” said Wirth, who led Vanderbilt Friday with 19 points on 7 of 7 shooting from the field, including 5 for 5 on three’s. “But we are the kind of team in which I never doubt that we are going to come back. I knew that we were going to come into this tournament ready to play and that we were going to get it back.”
Yet while there is little question that Vanderbilt now has its shooting touch back after a one-game hiccup in Knoxville, what Vanderbilt is really aiming to get back is the SEC championship they last won when this team’s current crop of seniors were freshmen in 2004.
And Balcomb knows for that to happen, her Commodores will need to do more than what they did Friday night in blitzing Florida.
“We are going to have to give it all we have on defense,” she said. That is going to be our key.”
Will Matthews spent three years as an investigative reporter with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group in Southern California. He is currently in his third year at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
