GREENVILLE, SC — As No. 2 Vanderbilt faced elimination the SEC Tournament — trailing No. 7 Ole Miss by 22 in the fourth quarter of Friday night’s quarterfinals at Bon Secours Wellness Arena — Commodores head coach Shea Ralph was ejected from the game by a referee.
Vanderbilt rallied and trimmed the deficit a bit, but Ole Miss ultimately went on to win 89-78 and will play in the semifinals on Saturday.
‘I’m really proud of the fight that my team showed today,’ Ralph said after the game. ‘Maybe I should have gotten kicked out sooner in terms of the way that they played, the fight that they showed, the togetherness — that’s the team that I know. This changes nothing about our season, changes nothing about what we’ve done, and I think it only adds fuel to the fire for what’s ahead.’
With less than 10 minutes to play, SEC Player of the Year Mikayla Blakes was whistled for her fourth foul during a scuffle on the floor for a loose ball. Upset with the call, Ralph — who was voted SEC Coach of the Year — dashed onto the court and began yelling at the referees.
Microphones on the SEC Network broadcast clearly picked up part of what Ralph said to one official: “How? How is that a (expletive) foul? She dove. You can’t call that. You suck. You suck (expletive).”
Just as Ralph’s husband — Vanderbilt associate coach Tom Garrick — was trying to get her to return to the bench, the referee blew his whistle, gave Ralph a tech and tossed her from the game. It’s the first time Ralph has been ejected from a game in her five seasons as the head coach of the Commodores.
‘I wasn’t trying to get kicked out,’ Ralph said. ‘I also think that at that time, what I said was warranted, and the action that I took was warranted, and I’ll stand behind that. You want to kick me out for it, they can kick me out. What I do love is the fight that my team showed. There’s only so many ways you can say something over and over again, so I said it differently, and I got kicked out, which is fine.’
Before Ralph was escorted off the floor by a police officer, she gathered up her five starters in a brief huddle and delivered one last message. She then high-fived the players on her bench and left the floor.
‘Coach Ralph comes in and fights for us every day,’ said Vanderbilt’s Sacha Washington, who finished with 16 points. ‘So when she got ejected, I know personally, I didn’t want to do anything else but fight for her.’
Vanderbilt trailed by as much as 32 points in the game. Minutes after Ralph’s ejection, they broke off a 23-6 run, but it wasn’t enough to trim the deficit to single digits.
Blakes started the game shooting 0-of-10 from the floor, but finished with 24 points on 8-of-26 shooting. She was not brought to the postgame podium and Vanderbilt’s locker room availability had closed to the media by the time Ralph’s press conference ended.
‘She missed some open shots that she normally makes. … And she didn’t have a bunch of points, but she always competes,’ Ralph said of Blakes. ‘I also thought, you know, she was fouled. She was being held, and there’s only so many ways you can respond to that. So, what I know about her is that she is going to fight to win the game. Never count her or us out. And that kid fought until the very end, because that is who she is.’