Vanderbilt WBB Ends Two-Game Skid With Win Over Florida: The Anchor – Sports Illustrated

No. 5 Vanderbilt women’s basketball got back on track Sunday afternoon with a 82-66 win over Florida at home.
It was a game where the final score was perhaps deceiving of how the game actually went. Vanderbilt experienced adversity similar to Friday’s game against No. 17 Ole Miss. The Gators jumped on Vanderbilt early as they led 19-10 at the end of the first quarter and built a lead as big as 25-10 over the Commodores.
It did not start pretty, but Vanderbilt punched back. The Commodores went on a 15-2 run to cut the deficit to two points, but seven unanswered points for Florida got the lead back up to nine going into halftime.
And then things quickly changed in the third quarter. Vanderbilt started the second half on a 15-3 run and continued its dominance through the rest of the quarter, outsourcing the Gators by 20 in the third frame and going into the final quarter with an 11-point lead. In the fourth quarter, Vanderbilt extended its lead and completed the comeback with a 16-point win.
The comeback win is tied for the fourth-largest comeback win for Vanderbilt since the 2013-2014 season. Of course, Vanderbilt could not have come back without star point guard Mikayla Blakes. Blakes put up 30 points and had eight assists and five rebounds to go along with her 50 percent shooting performance. It is the 42nd straight game Blakes scored in double figures.
One of the biggest differences in the game was Vanderbilt forcing Florida into 23 turnovers. The Commodores turned those takeaways into 33 points en route to a win.
“It was a long week. Those (previous) two games were tough and against really good teams that played really hard. But those are the games that are going to make us better, and we just have to approach it that way,” Vanderbilt head coach Shea Ralph said. “You learn a lot when you fail, and I think the last week, in a lot of ways, taught us many, many lessons that we wouldn’t have been able to learn in any other way. Now, I wish we had learned it before the second half today, but the response that I saw, and the way that we finished the game, were huge in terms of the growth that we need from here on out to the end of the season.”
Vanderbilt women’s golf at the Puerto Rico Classic, Day 2.
Vanderbilt men’s tennis lost to Virginia 6-1.
Vanderbilt women’s tennis beat Northwestern 6-0.
No. 5 Vanderbilt women’s basketball beat Florida 82-66.
Vanderbilt women’s tennis got off to a 5-0 start for the first time since 2021 after it took down Northwestern 6-0 in dominating fashion. The Commodores took the doubles point and did not look back in singles as they won all five singles matchups.
“Great team win for us today,” Vanderbilt women’s tennis head coach Aleke Tsoubanos said. “Our doubles continues to be a point of strength. I thought we played really solid, aggressive, committed doubles, and it’s always important to get that first point when you can. I think that set us up with some very good momentum heading into singles.”
11 days
Graham Baakko is a writer for Vanderbilt Commodores On SI, primarily covering football, basketball and baseball. Graham is a recent graduate from the University of Alabama, where he wrote for The Crimson White, WVUA-FM, WVUA 23 as he covered a variety of Crimson Tide sports. He also covered South Carolina athletics as a sportswriting intern for GamecockCentral.
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