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NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The first round of March Madness got off to a rousing start Saturday night in Music City when the hometown heroes bested the High Point Panthers 102-61. The game saw two records bested or tied (Mikayla Blakes added another points record to her lengthy list, and Sacha Washington recorded 17 rebounds) and put the team in a strong position ahead of Monday night’s game.
The Fighting Illini came out of the second game of the night with a 66-57 win over the Colorado Buffaloes. The team managed to edge out their opponent every quarter except the first; freshmen Cearah Parchment and Destiny Jackson netted a game-high 21 points and a double-double, respectively.
All four teams reflected on the season they’ve had, and what comes next. And, perhaps more than anything, a thread of mutual respect was woven from coach to coach, player to player, throughout the night. There are winners and losers, but during March Madness, every team is on the court because they belong there.
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The Vanderbilt Commodores ended round one of March Madness with a commanding 102-61 victory over the High Point Panthers, a win that head coach Shea Ralph said was the result of the team’s season-long emphasis on “whole team basketball.”
At Vanderbilt, Ralph said, “Everybody has value. Everybody has a role that they play.”
That also extends to people off the court, including the students, families, and individuals who come out to see the Commodores play. Ralph spoke about the impact that women in the game (specifically her mother, Marsha Lake, as well as longtime Tennessee head coach Pat Summitt) had on her as a child, and what it’s meant to be watch the athletes she’s coaching impact the people who show up at every game.
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“I think the best way I can describe it is that representation matters,” Ralph told reporters. “It matters. And the role that I play as a leader is that every day I show up, and my job is to be a torch bearer and a trailblazer for my players, because there were women, my mother, [and] Pat Summitt, they did that for me.”
Now, she added, it’s “my job to show our players what that looks like. You can be a powerful woman and a leader. You can also be a wife and a mom if you want. You can be somebody who has transformational relationships with players. And, I get it: sports is a business.”
“I get it,” Ralph said again. “The name of the game is to win. Our job is to win. But I’ve always thought if I can help them understand what that looks like in terms of creating winning habits — showing them every day that the result does not define us … that doesn’t define who you are. You can be all those other things.”
Her players, including Washington (who had a record-tying 17 rebounds) and Blakes (who bested a single-season scoring record set by Wendy Scholtens during the 1989-90 season with 856 points), are showing everyone who comes to the team’s games that “Yes — you can. You can look like me. You can come to Vanderbilt.”
The Panthers may not have come away from the tournament with their desired outcome, but that doesn’t take away from the program’s success this season. As head coach Chelsea Banbury told reporters following the game, “Something I’ve given this team a lot of credit for is knowing game plans and buying into them, and that’s what I said to them.”
The Commodores are tough, Banbury continued, but her team “bought in and learned them and they learned what they wanted to do. That was the message.” While speaking to her team in the locker room, she added, “I said this season was a lot of fun, and this game didn’t turn out how we wanted it to. We had some breakdowns, but you guys bought into the game plan and what we wanted to do.”
“And that’s why this year has been so special, because you’ve done that, and you’ve believed in me and our staff. It’s tough when you meet the big dogs … but I’m really proud of [how] we came in, and we bought into what we wanted to do out there.”
High Point will see the departure of two seniors Nevaeh Zavala and Chana Paxixe, as well as graduate students Aaliyah Collins and Lexi Fleming.
Illinois’ 66-57 win over Colorado came down to rebounding, head coach Shauna Green told reporters after the game — and that’s something the team will need to keep in mind as they move through the days to come.
“I said to these guys the biggest thing was the rebounding coming into this, the battle of the boards,” Green explained. “We were right there. We only lost by two, and I thought if you were right there or won it you would have a chance to win this game.”
As the team prepares to face the Commodores on Monday night, they’ll need to focus on “resiliency down the stretch” she continued. “We’ve been in a lot of close games where this group has had to make those key plays. I thought that kind of came through today, that our league prepared us for a lot of those tight ones and close ones against really tough teams.”
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Tough was the name of the game between the Fighting Illini and the Buffaloes. The match was frequently close, which meant players had to completely lock in — something they’re used to doing. “We’ve had a lot of close games this season, and some of them we may not have closed out earlier in the season,” forward Cearah Parchment told reporters. “That experience helped us now. We didn’t make these mistakes we were making a month ago.”
Timing is a crucial piece of the March Madness puzzle: the timing of your games, the timing of your team’s peak. But toughness is another key element, and Illinois brought that in spades. “That’s what you got to do if you want to win in March, right? It’s the NCAA tournament,” Green said. “You lose, you go home. I tell them that all the time. I say that all the time. How tough are you going to be? How bad do you want it? Every 50/50 has to be yours if you’re going to continue to move on.”
“I loved it,” she said of her team’s resolve to answer that call. “That’s what I want this program to be about is tough, gritty, blue collar, hard nosed, whatever you want to call it. I told them that in pregame, that ball is on the floor, we better see five white jerseys diving. I thought we showed a lot of toughness tonight.”
While the Colorado Buffaloes couldn’t pull off the win they wanted Saturday night, the team still had a special 2025-26 season. It takes a lot to successfully pull off being a college athlete, head coach JR Payne told reporters after the game, and her group knows how to do that well.
“What we do is really hard. I think I’ve said this before,” she said. “Being a college athlete is really hard. There is so many cool things about it but there is also so many really difficult, physically, emotionally, mentally things that are hard about it.”
Sometimes, it’s hard because you’re rebuilding, and your team is young. Seven Buffaloes just finished their freshman and sophomore seasons, and they did so by “showing up with a joyful spirit” every day, Payne added. “They were genuinely happy to be at practice; I was genuinely happy to see each and every one of them … and they weren’t all perfect practices. We didn’t make all our shots all the time.”
The Buffaloes came into the game believing they would win it, Payne said, and knowing they were prepared — which isn’t something that always happens. “We had had some of the best practices of the year this week as far as just focus and the right type of lightheartedness and really locked in and focused,” she said. But, in the end, so did Illinois, something Payne respects.
Ultimately, the loss came down to the fact that the Fighting Illini “also probably were very locked in and like I said earlier, just two really good teams that I thought competed good, clean, aggressive basketball.”
Illinois and Vanderbilt will face off in Round 2 on Monday at 7:00 p.m. ET.
Looking for more March Madness stories? Read all our NCAA Tournament coverage at The IX Sports.
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