It's already a foregone conclusion, the 2008-09 Vanderbilt Commodores women's basketball team will be the team cutting down the nets in Saint Louis, when the 2009 Women's Basketball Tournament is finished. The question is what is the path that they will take to get there?
Based on their performance this season, the women should be a No. 3 seed in the tournament, preferably in the Raleigh Regional, so that they can play closer to home and avoid the undefeated and odds-on favorites to win the championship, the Connecticut Huskies. Currently, the Commodores are projected to be slotted as a No. 4 seed in the Raleigh Regional, according to ESPN. However, that clearly is too low of a seeding, as the No. 15 Commodores are a team much better than a four seed in the tournament.
In some projections, the Commodores are even seeded lower than the Lady Volunteers, a team that the Commodores had a better record than in conference play and overall during the season.
The women finished second in the Southeastern Conference during the regular season and finished the season off with a great performance in the SEC Tournament, defeating SEC champion, and probable 2-seed Auburn, LSU, a lock for the tournament as well, and Georgia, a team currently on the bubble for the tournament to win the tournament title for the second time in three years, and third time since 2004.
The team went 4-3 against teams ranked in the top 25 in terms of RPI, so they have shown up to play against the quality teams. Two of those three losses came earlier in the year before the team found the cohesion that they have shown as of late, winning seven of their last nine.
The one negative on their resume are some bad losses to Michigan and Mississippi. Both teams have RPIs that are below 100 and were games that the Commodores should have won. However, you can not single out individual games and judge the Commodores on those; you have to look at the whole profile of Vanderbilt, and from there, you can see that the team is deserving of a high seed in the tournament. Their RPI is 24 currently, so they pass the eye test of what a top team in the tournament should look like.
Come Monday night, we will find out what the selection committee has in store for Vandy, but hopefully they are fair in their assessment of the girls and their play this season.
