NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The tears started freely flowing down Sacha Washington‘s face before she was even announced as part of Vanderbilt’s starting five Monday night. The crucial match against Illinois in the second round of the NCAA Tournament also served as the last time Washington played a game in Memorial Gymnasium.
Washington, who has been described as the Commodores’ light all season by head coach Shea Ralph, pulled it together and had herself a bit of a ball game.
She brought her signature energy to the court every time she was called in to play, and by the end of the night had matched her season high of three blocks, sending an electric jolt through the impressive crowd each and every time.
The game was also the final home game for Jada Brown, who spent all four of her years with the program. The Commodores supported her through the loss of her father, who, according to Ralph, passed away over the summer.
“It was really, really, really hard for her,” Ralph said. “We weren’t sure we were going to get her back, and we did, and now you’re seeing her make a huge impact on our team.”
Two other seniors, Ndjakalenga Mwenentanda and Justine Pissott, also played their final games at Memorial on Monday night. As transfers from top-tier programs – Mwenentanda from Texas, which made it to the Final Four in 2025, and Pissott from Tennessee – both came into the program with their eyes and hearts open.
“So all of them hold a very special (place) in our heart,” Ralph shared. “We wouldn’t be here tonight without them.”
With the help of those seniors, Ralph and the Commodores achieved a crucial mission: advancing to the program’s first Sweet Sixteen since 2009. The 75-57 win over Illinois was a big one – not because of the point margin, but because of what it represents in terms of the team’s past, present and future.
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Sacha Washington has had a full journey with the Commodores
Washington got her on-court skills from her grandmother, Hazel Thomas, affectionately known as Ms. Hazel or Mimi Picou, Washington’s mother, Simone A. Picou told The IX Sports. Washington’s grandmother played an enormous role in her life.
“Sacha was very close to her because I was in Georgia raising Sasha, and my mother lived right in the same subdivision with us, and she had a lot to do with Sacha,” Picou explained. “She was very close to her. She would pick her up from school, from the bus stops. She would be there all the time with Sacha, doing her homework. She kept feeding her gumbo dinners and her red beans and rice … and she still tells me that I cannot cook like her Mimi.”
Thomas played basketball in high school and earned a scholarship to play in college, though she never attended. She introduced Washington to the sport by setting up a hoop in her driveway for Washington to use to learn to play. Picou says Thomas always knew basketball was going to be a part of Washington’s life.
Basketball took Washington to Nashville to play at Vanderbilt after four years at Collins Hill High School in Suwanee, Georgia.
Her five years with the Commodores weren’t always easy. Washington, who bought into Ralph’s vision early and earnestly from the beginning, missed the entire 2024-25 season with a blood clot in her leg. Her return this year wasn’t always guaranteed, and she appeared at two senior nights – 2025 and 2026 – just in case.
Having the opportunity to close out her career this way, with her school hosting the first and second rounds of the tournament thanks in part to her own efforts on the floor, was a topic she spent all weekend speaking about.
“It’s awesome. We love this court,” Washington told reporters March 20. “It’s just great to see that all of our hard work this season has paid off and allowed us to be back in Memorial a couple more times. I think it’s very exciting.”
Washington has a way of shifting the tone of a room with her constant positivity, Ralph told reporters that same night. Maintaining that kind of disposition isn’t easy for anyone, but it’s something that seems to come naturally to Washington.
“Any room, any time, any day, she’ll walk in with a smile on her face and a bounce in her step. She’ll have a joke, give you a big hug,” Ralph said. “No matter if she’s feeling great or not. I think, as people, that’s a great way to be.
“As you get older, I think you realize how hard that can be. She just comes in like that every day. She comes in to practice happy. She is living her best life right now. Honestly, I mean, this year obviously we wouldn’t be the same without her.”
The love between Ralph and Washington extends to the latter’s family. Washington joined the team right after Stephanie White, Ralph’s predecessor, was fired.
“Immediately, I knew that Coach Ralph was destiny, because when Sacha accepted the offer here, the coach ahead of [Ralph] was just released,” Picou said. “And then we were uncoached for about a couple of weeks. And I said, ‘Just stay where you are, because this is an awesome school. We’ll just wait to see who it is.”
So, Washington waited, and what happened next was fated, Picou insisted. Like a lot of sports parents, Picou has encountered her family’s fair share of coaches who left a lot to be desired, but Ralph was different.
“She’s had a number of coaches, but for one to take her under her wing and change her life as Coach Shea has changed Sacha’s life, it’s just been so fulfilling,” Picou said. “I was always scared as to what was gonna happen to her. But once she got off the airplane, I told Sacha, ‘This is UConn’s assistant coach. You’re gonna be just fine.'”
Washington didn’t quite know as much as her mother did about Ralph’s legacy, but she trusted her mom. Ralph played for Geno Auriemma in the early 2000s and came back to the program as a coach. Her mother, Marsha Lake, was also a tremendous basketball player in her own right.
“Once Shea started being with her and she started mentoring Sacha, then Sacha quickly latched on to what I was saying,” Picou said. “And I think she saw that when she was diagnosed with the blood clot, she saw how much Coach Ralph cared for her.”
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Justine Pissott made a life-changing decision
Washington’s tears returned at the end of the game, when she and Brown stepped toward the student section, hands shaped in hearts held high over their heads. The crowd answered in kind, a resounding roar that bounced off the wooden bleachers and throughout the arena.
She wasn’t the only one feeling the feelings and riding the wave. Justine Pissott, who is also in her final year of eligibility after transferring in for the 2023-24 season, was visibly choked up as she reflected on the impact Ralph has had on her on and off the court.
“I think she’s changed my life,” Pissott told reporters after the game, the honesty behind her words clear on her face. “I’m going to get emotional, so I’m not going to say a lot. But I’m super thankful for her.
“Not only is she a great human being, but the amount of times we’ve had conversations about faith and God is what makes her so special. She knows how important He is to me, and last night we had a conversation, and she wrote me a letter, and it was just tears to my eyes.”
As Pissott told The IX Sports in February, Vanderbilt wasn’t her first choice – and she really only took a phone call with the team’s staff as a favor to assistant coach Kevin DeMille, who started recruiting her when she was 13-years-old. But she quickly realized that Vanderbilt was the school for her, and maybe more importantly, that she “(needed) to play under Shea Ralph.”
Pissott’s experience at Vanderbilt has been more fruitful than she imagined. She says the coaches picked me up at one of my lowest moments in my life.”
“I was struggling a lot after freshman year, had a loss of a grandfather, and these people picked me up when I didn’t know I could be picked up,” Pissott said. “They keep picking me up every day.”
It was hard to move two feet in any direction over the course of the first two rounds of March Madness in Nashville without hearing the word “special.” And not just from Vanderbilt, but also from every team that made the trip. High Point, Illinois, and Colorado players and coaches alike could only come up with one word to describe how this season has felt.
Sometimes culture is built through unwavering intentionality, and sometimes a team and a coach get lucky. At Vanderbilt, it seems this season has been a perfect mix of both.
“Like we’ve been saying, coming here has been one of the greatest decisions of my life,” Pissott also said. “I have my dad here in the stands. He has supported me since Day 1. The fans have supported us since Day 1. The first people that come into the student section are our practice players, and I think that just goes to show the community that we’ve built here.”
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Mikayla Blakes chose Vanderbilt and never looked back
The way Ralph has looked after her player speaks volumes to the kind of leader she has been for the Commodores. Her compassion is part of what attracted superstar Mikayla Blakes to the program in the first place.
“This is a woman who cares more about you than a basketball player,” Blakes told reporters Monday night. “This past year, I did struggle a little bit, just feeling I didn’t have a break. She’s the first person to reach out to me. She knows. She goes, ‘I know you’re not going to tell me, but I see you’re struggling. What can I do to help you?’ Things like that. And ‘We’re going to find joy in your life.’ She found joy in my life.”
Blakes revealed that she wasn’t especially happy about playing basketball most of this season, a stunning admission when one considers the sheer volume of records she either created or shattered – Monday night alone, she set the NCAA Division I record for most points scored by a sophomore with 891 and totaled a career-high nine assists.
“I feel like this year she brought joy back to basketball for me. It was something I was struggling with a lot, but I couldn’t ask for a better head coach, better mentor, better
role model,” Blakes added, before she revealed that, like Washington, her mom also believed in Coach Ralph from the beginning.
“This is a human being you want in your life, and she’s like a second mother figure to me, which is why my mom was 100 percent full ride, like let’s go to Vanderbilt, play under Coach Ralph.”
Blakes’ admission was a stunning one, given the heights she reached this season. In addition to the honors and accolades she tacked on Monday night, Blakes was named SEC Player of the Year and a consensus first-team All-American.
She led the nation in scoring throughout the season and held the SEC’s longest active double-digit points streak. This year, Blakes also proved that, sure, she can shoot, but she’s also capable of a lot more than that.
Blakes has a knack for knowing where her shooters are at all times, reading the court the same way some people read a menu – with eagerness and delight. But instead of ordering a coffee and a snack, Blakes is the chef tasked with cooking the entire meal. If her own shots aren’t falling, she doesn’t get lost. She gets the ball where it needs to go, and she bounces right back.
And when it’s time to face the team’s next opponent, Notre Dame, Blakes said the Commodores will approach the game the same way they have all the others.
“I think when we come into a tournament we have to continue to be us, and we’re going to make our game plan our game plan,” she said before adding that Notre Dame’s Hannah Hidalgo is “a really good player, and we’re going to play her like that, too.”
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Shea Ralph didn’t build Vanderbilt on her own
She’s the face of the program in a lot of ways, but Ralph has always made two things clear: the Commodores play whole-team basketball, and a lot of women are responsible for helping her become the woman she is today.
Those women include her mother and her mother’s good friend Pat Summitt, whom Ralph originally thought she’d play for.
As Lake told The IX Sports in November, Ralph was Tennessee-bound until all of a sudden, she wasn’t anymore – and that was after she put in a phone call to the legendary coach and insisted her daughter had what it took to make it. Lake wasn’t wrong, and Ralph has continued to build on the legacy of each of her inspirations through her work in Nashville.
The list of women also includes Vanderbilt’s athletic director, Candice Storey Lee.
Ralph and Lee met as teens when they both attended the same USA Basketball tryout, they told The IX Sports last summer. The pair shared a moment after both were cut and then went their separate ways.
But when it was time for Lee, a women’s sports pioneer in her own right – she’s the first woman and Black woman to be the school’s athletic director – to hire a new coach, she knew who she wanted.
Like her players, Ralph was also emotional Monday night. After wiping tears from her own eyes, she told reporters that expressing emotion is “okay,” though she tries to impress upon her team that they not “operate emotionally” on the court. “But we’re human beings, and we have emotion,” she added.
“I’m a basketball coach because I love basketball, but I get to lead women,” Ralph said. “I get to impact lives positively. That’s my real job. That’s my job because people did it for me, and if I’m honest, (Lee) did it for me, too.
“I think what makes me so proud to be at Vanderbilt, why I love it so much here, is that we get the opportunity and the platform and the stage right now to show people, to show the world what it looks like to invest in women. That’s what (Lee) does every single day.”
As much as Ralph’s players are grateful for her, she’s grateful for Lee because of the support she’s received and the investment that has gone into the program.
“The things that I do for my players, (Lee) has done for me,” Ralph said. “It’s allowed me to pay it forward. We wouldn’t be where we are without her.”
At Vanderbilt, where whole-team basketball is the norm, it turns out that “whole team” extends beyond the players on the floor and the bench, beyond the coaches who are cheering them on, and beyond Ralph herself as she paces Memorial’s extensive sidelines or drops to one knee.
It extends to Lee, to the students at the school who fill up the stands, and to the administration. It also extends to the fans, who are excited to have a program to be proud of yet again.
The Commodores will travel to Fort Worth, Texas, this week to prepare for Notre Dame. Their sights are set on the biggest prize of the season, but just as they have all season, they’ll take it slowly, one game at a time.
At some point, a point that is only too soon, they’ll have to say goodbye to Washington, Pissott, Brown and Mwenentanda, but thanks to the efforts and faith of those players, the program stands a strong chance of being able to continue to build teams that will only get better.
Whatever the next two weeks hold, the Commodores plan to keep building, and they’ll continue to do so the Vanderbilt way.
Looking for more March Madness stories? Read all our NCAA Tournament coverage at The IX Sports.