Vanderbilt spent 48 hours going from the peak to the valley. On Thursday night, the Commodores demolished No. 4 Texas by 16 points, and Mikayla Blakes became the first SEC player in 25 years to score 30 or more in four consecutive games.
By Saturday afternoon, the NCAA selection committee rewarded them with a No. 1 seed.
By Sunday evening, they were coming off the floor in Athens after losing to unranked Georgia.The timing could not have been worse for Shea Ralph’s program, and it could not have been better for bracketologists who love chaos.
The 48-Hour Bracket Implosion
The selection committee revealed its first top 16 of the season on Saturday, slotting UConn, UCLA, South Carolina, and Vanderbilt as the four No. 1 seeds. The Commodores earned their spot by throttling Texas, 86-70, behind Blakes’ 34-point eruption, knocking the Longhorns off the top line for the first time this season. It was the most points anyone has scored against Texas in the Vic Schaefer era.
Less than 24 hours later, Dani Carnegie poured in 29 points, and Trinity Turner hit a go-ahead basket with 50 seconds left to give Georgia a 76-74 upset win in Stegeman Coliseum. Vanderbilt’s Sacha Washington had a chance to force overtime, but her floater fell short off the front rim as time expired.
The loss dropped the Commodores to 24-3 and 10-3 in SEC play, now two games behind South Carolina in the conference standings. Vanderbilt remains in the AP Top 5, holding steady at No. 5 in Monday’s poll, but its grip on a No. 1 seed is suddenly tenuous. The committee’s next reveal comes March 1, and the Commodores’ margin for error has evaporated.
UConn remains the runaway overall No. 1, riding a 43-game winning streak at 27-0. The Huskies are the only undefeated team left in Division I and picked up comfortable wins over Creighton and Marquette last week.
UCLA sits at No. 2 with a 25-1 record and 19-game winning streak, unbeaten in Big Ten play with dominant wins including Sunday’s 92-48 demolition of Indiana. South Carolina, at 25-2, leads the SEC at 11-1 after beating LSU, 79-72, in Baton Rouge on Saturday, a victory that gave Dawn Staley her 500th win at the school.
Texas rebounded from the Vanderbilt loss with a gutsy 65-63 win at Tennessee on Sunday, keeping the Longhorns at No. 4 in the AP poll with a 24-3 record. They sit fourth in the SEC at 9-3, one game ahead of the Lady Vols.
The SEC Keeps Devouring Itself
The Southeastern Conference has eight ranked teams in Monday’s AP poll. It also has a problem: nobody can win consistently.
South Carolina owns the best conference record at 11-1, but the Gamecocks lost to Texas in November. Vanderbilt beat Texas, LSU, and Michigan but just lost to Georgia, a team that was 5-6 in conference play entering Sunday.
Texas has three SEC losses but owns the head-to-head over the top-ranked Gamecocks. LSU has lost to South Carolina, Texas, Vanderbilt, and Kentucky. Kentucky lost to Vanderbilt but beat LSU. The cannibalistic nature of the league means any team can beat any other on a given night, and it makes projecting seeding lines genuinely difficult.
Georgia’s win over Vanderbilt was the Bulldogs’ first over a top-five opponent since knocking off No. 2 NC State in 2021. Carnegie, a sophomore guard, had 18 points by halftime and controlled the game throughout. Georgia built a 14-point lead before Vanderbilt clawed back, briefly taking the lead in the fourth quarter, only to watch Turner answer with the decisive bucket.
The loss snapped Vanderbilt’s four-game winning streak and highlighted a troubling trend: the Commodores shot 37% from the field in a game where their bench struggled to contribute. Blakes and Justine Pissott combined for 50 of the team’s 74 points. When the supporting cast goes cold, Vanderbilt becomes a much more beatable team.
Texas Tech’s upset loss to Oklahoma State on Saturday added another wrinkle. The Lady Raiders fell, 75-65, in Stillwater, dropping to 23-4 and No. 20 in Monday’s poll. Oklahoma State held Texas Tech scoreless for the final 3:18 of the first half to build a 12-point cushion they never relinquished.
The path to Selection Sunday now runs through three more weeks of regular season chaos. UConn looks untouchable. UCLA looks nearly so, with only Texas having figured out how to beat Cori Close’s team this season. South Carolina controls its own destiny in the SEC. Everyone else is fighting for positioning that could change with every result.
Vanderbilt hosts Kentucky next Sunday. Another slip, and the Commodores might find themselves on the two-line in March. A dominant close to the regular season, and the committee could put them right back among the top seeds. That is the nature of this sport in February: the top four can crack open in a single weekend, and it can just as easily be rebuilt.