Sacha Washington has seen it all.
The fifth-year Vanderbilt women’s basketball player didn’t originally commit to Shea Ralph, but Ralph convinced her to stick with the Commodores after Stephanie White was fired.
She went through the WNIT run in 2022, the season of only having eight players in 2022-23, leading Vanderbilt to its first NCAA tournament in 2024, then missing the 2024-25 season with blood clots.
Now, in her final season of college basketball, Washington has been a key piece of the team that finished undefeated at home in the regular season for the first time ever. In the fifth-ranked Commodores’ 85-60 win over No. 23 Alabama (21-8, 7-8 SEC) at Memorial Gymnasium on Feb. 26, Washington scored 17 points with 10 rebounds, seven assists, two blocks and two steals.
“It’s really special to me just to see the growth over these last five years,” Washington said. “And I will honestly never forget this season. I’ll never forget this journey. It’s been amazing, and I am so excited for it to keep going.”
Vanderbilt (26-3, 12-3) is projected as 2-seed in March Madness and a near certainty to host the first and second rounds.
Against the Crimson Tide, Mikayla Blakes led the way in scoring again, with 35 points, five assists and four steals. But it was players like Washington and Justine Pissott (11 points, six rebounds) who laid the foundation for Blakes and Aubrey Galvan to come in and become the final pieces Vanderbilt needed to be a true contender.
Outside the missed 2024-25 season, Washington has played in all but one game in her Commodores career. The one missed game was the most recent one, an 81-79 win over Kentucky on Feb. 22. Coming back against Alabama, it didn’t look like she missed a beat.
“She’s really good at making reads when she has the ball, or off-the-ball cutting, things like that,” Blakes said. “So I think we missed that a little bit against Kentucky, but we’re happy we had it today.”
Even when things didn’t go as according to plan earlier in her career, Washington stayed the course. She became a key piece of Ralph’s team instead of decommitting or transferring, and though she had to sit out last season, she made the decision to return for a fifth year before her teammates played in March Madness.
Going into the year, the team made a decision to enjoy the journey and play with joy. Blakes and Galvan have embodied it, and so has Washington. The things she’s been through make it that much sweeter.
“It’s really cool that Sacha has been here for five years, and listening to her talk about this year and how she’ll never forget it, and how she’s having the time of her life,” Ralph said. “As a coach, honestly, that’s what you do this for, is to have kids like Sacha who have been in the trenches, stay, pour into us and then be the heart and soul of our team in her fifth year, as we’re doing something that’s never been done before.”
Aria Gerson covers Vanderbilt athletics for The Tennessean. Contact her at agerson@gannett.com or on X @aria_gerson.
