NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Vanderbilt University will be home to rounds 1 and 2 of the 2026 NCAA Tournament at Memorial Gymnasium this weekend, something Coach Shea Ralph told reporters is the culmination of a lot of planning and of hard work.
“We really worked last year to create a schedule that we felt was worthy of hosting as long as we took care of business,” Ralph said. “So, it’s almost surreal to be sitting in the building, looking at all the signs, going out on the court, and seeing that we’re hosting the NCAA Tournament.”
The No. 2 Commodores will face the No. 15 High Point Panthers Saturday, with the No. 7 Illinois Fighting Illini going up against the No. 10 Colorado Buffaloes immediately afterward. The winners will play one another Monday.
All four teams were available to speak with media Friday, and all four teams brought their unique energy to those conversations and to the court.
Vibes are high at Vanderbilt: “Committment is different”
The Vanderbilt locker room was bustling with reporters, photographers, and players Friday afternoon — and a whole bunch of coloring books, Lego-esque blocks, and card games. Notably, there was nary a phone in sight, and that’s something Coach Shea Ralph made sure of.
Providing players ways to keep themselves occupied and focused is part of “teaching them what it looks like to be a team that’s going to compete championships, and, so, they don’t get to have their phones,” she told reporters. “As they have people that come in to ask them questions and interview them, we want them to know how important that is.”
“They’re going to spend time together,” she added. “They’re not going to get this time back.”
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The options were received by Mikayla Blakes, Jada Brown, Monique Williams, and Ava Black. Williams and Black admitted the team gets extremely competitive when it comes to card games, and Brown added that when she can have her phone, her tries to sneak coaches into a TikTok or two. “Maybe not a dance,” she laughed.
When the team is on the road things can sometimes get a little electronic, Trinity Wilson said. They’ll bring a game like Uno, but they also like to pack a Nintendo Switch or two. The team’s favorite game: Overcooked.
The program will need to sustain a mix of relaxed and focused to achieve their March Madness goals this month. “We’re done playing teams that aren’t very good,” Ralph told reporters. “There’s no more of those left. So if they didn’t know it, then after yesterday, they definitely know it [now].”
Coaching her team this year has been “a joy,” she added. “I love walking into my office. I love spending time with them and our staff.”
That team includes fifth-year athlete Sacha Washington, who has been with Ralph from the beginning. “You know how people just walk into a room and light it up?” Ralph said of Washingotn. “That’s Sacha. Any room, any time, any day. She’ll walk in with a smile on her face, with a bounce in her step. She’ll have a joke, she’ll give you a big hug … I think, as people, that’s a great way to be. And as you get older, I think you realize how hard that can be.”
Vanderbilt’s women’s basketball program “wouldn’t be the same without her,” Ralph added of Washington. “And you don’t see that very much anymore, where kids committ somewhere, to be there for five years, especially through what we’ve been through, and what she’s been through. We see people jump ship all the time — and that’s okay. I’m not judging. I’m just saying Sacha’s committment is different.”
The Commodores headed into the gym for practice following Ralph’s comments to reporters, La Roux’s “Bulletproof” blasting as players danced on the baseline. Win, lose, or draw, one thing was clear: Vanderbilt is ready to ride this energetic wave wherever it’s taking them.
Illinois’s youth is an asset: “Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know”
Illinois comes into March Madness with a young roster, something Coach Shauna Green said could be an asset as the team pursues their tournament goals. After all, “The good thing about youth is sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know. They just come and they play,” she said. “I’m really proud of us … a lot of people might not have thought we’d even get here with having such a young roster, but they continue to be resilient, continue to step up, and they’ll be ready to go.”
That roster includes Jasmine Brown-Hagger, who transferred into Illinois two seasons ago, and Berry Wallace, who is still relatively fresh off of a February injury. Green has previously cited both as leaders for the team, a mantle they’re willing to take on.
The pair have “both been here before,” Brown-Hagger told reporters Friday, “and we just know what it takes to win the first game, and even what it takes to win the second … so, I think for us, right now, it’s just [about] leading by example and using our voices, and making sure everyone on the team is very excited.”
Having a roster of graduating seniors comes with its own benefits and challenges, Green said, but “when they’re young, as I said, they don’t know what they don’t know. And how hungry they are, that’s been … it’s been really fun to coach this group. They’re so coachable.”
Her young stars “want to be elite, so they’re little sponges,” she added. “They listen to everything and you can actually see them get better in real time, and it’s been pretty cool.”
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High Point is ready for anything: “We know when it’s time to work”
The High Point Panthers’ men’s basketball team thrilled a lot of fans (and destroyed a lot of brackets in the process) when they subjected Wisconsin to an 83-82 upset Thursday. The women’s team is well aware of that feat, coach Chelsea Banbury told reporters in Nashville Friday, but they’re also staying focused on their own game.
“This group came together really early, and I think a lot of our success came from the fact that they genuinely love each other and like being around each other,” she said. “They are a goofy group.”
The team knows how to have fun, she added, but “they also know when to be serious.”
High Point has also put an emphasis on family over everything this tournament season. Assistant coach Katie Clayman is married to the men’s team’s head coach Flynn Clayman and was on site in Portland, Oregon, for the team’s winning match. (Katie was also joined by the pair’s young son.)
Katie flew back Friday to be with the team ahead of tomorrow’s game. “One thing I honestly believe, and my son’s here with me at practice, is family is first. Family is important to us,” Banbury said. “Our families are around. We want them to be around the sport. I do think we’ve kind of developed that at High Point, and we have that going for us, that she should be there — she should be there supporting Flynn, this was his first NCAA Tournament as head coach.”
Katie, Banbury added, was “where she needed to be, and she’ll be here with us.”
Colorado’s trip is 10 years in the making: “Very much like a family”
Colorado’s head coach JR Payne took over the program in March 2026 — nearly 10 years to the day today. While speaking to reporters she reflected on the “journey” she and different iterations of the Buffaloes have been on together.
“When we came to the University of Colorado, my children were babies — now, they’re much older than they were, and so our family’s grown up pretty much in the state of Colorado,” Payne said. “Our program, I think, was in dead last place in the best conference in the country, the Pac-12 Conference.”
Building a program from the very bottom was a challenge, but it’s one Payne attacked. “We’ve just really, really continued to recruit the right type of people,” she also said. “We knew who we wanted to be, what we wanted to be about, and how we sort of wanted to go about building it. And that’s just blue collar, tough, fearless — that sort of mentality.”
Family has also been at the heart of Colorado’s program. “Honestly, there’s no better place, I think, to raise a family than in the environment that we’ve been able to raise them,” Payne said. “They’re around these strong, incredible, competent, confident, beautfiul college athletes, who are experiencing and accomplishing great things. I think that’s a gift, especially for your girls, to grow up around that.”
