Vanderbilt's Mikayla Blakes had two chances to be a March hero vs. Notre Dame. She missed them both. – CBS Sports

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FORT WORTH, Texas – Friday afternoon’s Sweet 16 game between No. 2 Vanderbilt and No. 6 Notre Dame was billed as a clash between the two best young guards in college basketball, Mikayla Blakes and Hannah Hidalgo.
Hidalgo was firmly winning that battle all game long, flirting with a 30-point quadruple-double. Blakes — the leading scorer in women’s college basketball this season at 27 points per game — started the game off cold, going just 1 of 13 in the first half. Vanderbilt trailed by as many as 12 points in the second half.
But despite all of that, in the last 30 seconds, Blakes had two chances to have a March moment for the ages and send Vanderbilt to its first Elite Eight since 2002. She came up short, and Notre Dame punched its ticket to a showdown against mighty UConn, the tournament’s undefeated top seed, with a trip to the Final Four on the line.
With 22 seconds left and Vanderbilt trailing 66-64 following another magical play by Hidalgo, Blakes inbounded the ball to Aiyana Mitchell, who flicked it back to her at the top of the key. She beat her defenders around the edge, drove to the basket and had the angle on Malaya Cowles in the paint, when, inexplicably, she lost the ball out of bounds. Hidalgo, who had 10 steals on the day and broke the single-season steals record in the first quarter, couldn’t even take direct credit for this turnover; she was clear across the court.
“I guess I just dribbled it off my foot,” Blakes told reporters postgame. “I saw an open lane, but I guess I moved too fast.”
But the game wasn’t over yet. On the next possession, Notre Dame’s Cassandre Prosper went 1 of 2 from the line, increasing the Irish’s lead to three, 67-64, but keeping it a one-possession game. Again, there was hope for Vanderbilt and Blakes. With 14 seconds left, freshman Aubrey Galvan missed a 3-pointer, got her own rebound and found Blakes beyond the arc. Hidalgo closed quickly, but Blakes sidestepped her and got a clean shot off before the buzzer. It hit the front of the rim, the buzzer sounded and Notre Dame emerged with an upset victory.
Blakes hung her head and walked to the sidelines as Hidalgo and the rest of the Fighting Irish celebrated wildly just over her shoulder. On this day, when it mattered the most, the ball quite literally didn’t bounce her way. And on a day where Hidalgo — who got the better of Blakes when the New Jersey natives faced off in AAU and high school, too — proved how other-worldly she is, Blakes was left feeling rather mortal.
“Starting the game, I guess, [I’m] human. I miss shots,” Blakes said. “So I wouldn’t say it was nerves or anything like that. I just have to learn from the performance, because I can’t perform for my team like that in a moment as big as this.”
Vanderbilt coach Shea Ralph was quick to come to her star player’s defense.
“I’ll also say that obviously you want to be able to execute in the last possession of the game, and I think that’s what makes this game fun. But that’s not what lost us this game,” Ralph said, speaking up for Blakes during a portion of the press conference that was reserved for questions for the athletes. “We wouldn’t be here without her, so there are lots of things that we could have done a lot better throughout the course of that game in particular, but those two plays at the end, we got two great shots. I’m putting the ball in her hands every single time, and that’s not why we lost the game.”
Ralph is partially right, of course. Hundreds of plays, decisions, calls and bounces go into the outcome of a basketball game. And while Blakes’ offensive struggles set the tone for the team in the first quarter, her ability to get to the free-throw line and continue to fight on both sides of the ball was a big reason why Vanderbilt clawed its way back into the game. Blakes finished with 26 points, eight boards, three assists and three steals. She is a phenomenal talent who has transformed Vanderbilt’s program with her talent and drive, and she will be a leading contender for player of the year next season. There is so much to be proud of, and so many reasons for Blakes and Vanderbilt to believe they will make it even further next season.
But underneath the positive spin, there’s also the reality that in the biggest game of her career, Blakes was 7 of 26 from the field, 0 of 5 on 3-pointers and came up short in the clutch — twice. 
Last season, in her first NCAA Tournament, Blakes and Vanderbilt were a No. 7 seed and lost in the first round to No. 10 Oregon. Vanderbilt started that game off poorly and got down by as many as 19 points in the second half before clawing its way back to push the game to overtime. In the extra frame, however, the Commodores fell short of the comeback, and Blakes fouled out with over a minute to go.
Ralph pushed back at drawing parallels between the narrative flow of the two games, but did say her team grew a lot from that loss.
“I think that what happened last year had fueled us to put ourselves in a better position this year to do more things, and honestly, we had such a great season because of the way that my players came together after last year, because of how much harder we worked, how much more together we played, how much more unified we were as a group,” Ralph said.
Blakes seems ready to use this loss to fuel her, too.
“We’re excited to get back to work,” she said, “so we don’t feel this way again.”
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