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Iyana Moore

 Vanderbilt Athletics

A Vanderbilt women’s basketball team picked to finish near the bottom of the Southeastern Conference this season will try to continue its defiant march toward a potential NCAA Tournament berth this week.

The men’s team, meanwhile, is battling to avoid finishing with the worst record of coach Jerry Stackhouse’s five-year tenure at the school.

Vanderbilt’s women (20-8, 7-7), who were a combined 28-38 in their first two seasons under coach Shea Ralph, are bidding to return to the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2014.

The Commodores took a big step in the right direction over the weekend, downing Arkansas 62-53.

That victory over the Razorbacks (18-11, 6-8) was Vanderbilt’s fourth conference road win of the season, which is four more than the program had combined for during the past two seasons. Jordyn Oliver scored 12 points for the Commodores, with Sacha Washington adding 11 and Iyana Moore 10. Vandy outrebounded Arkansas 46-31 and made 18-of-21 free throws in winning for the third time in four outings.

“Our team figures out how to win,” Ralph told media. “I think we’ve gotten to the point in the program’s revitalization where we can compete with just about anyone.

"Now it’s about learning how to win when things get hard. It’s been hard for us on the road this season, and we didn’t get off to a good start today ... But we continued to defend, continued to rebound, hit our free throws, and made some really gutsy plays down the stretch.”

The good news for Vanderbilt’s women’s team is that it will be favored in each of its last two regular-season games, at Missouri (11-16, 2-12) on Thursday and home against Georgia (12-15, 3-11) on Sunday.

The bad news is that wins over those teams might not give much of a boost to Vanderbilt’s NET ranking, which is No. 57 in the country.

In contrast, Vanderbilt’s men (7-20, 2-12) will be seeking to snap a three-game losing streak when the Commodores visit Arkansas (14-13, 5-9) on Tuesday. Vandy is 2-12 in its last 14 games, and the Dores’ average margin of defeat in those losses has been 16.6 points.

The Commodores have four regular-season games remaining, and they need one win to ensure they won’t have fewer than three conference victories — which is what Stackhouse’s first two teams produced in 2019-20 and 2020-21.

The fewest overall wins under Stackhouse came in the shortened 2020-21 season, when Vandy went 9-16.

Vanderbilt posted winning overall records in each of the last two years, along with a combined SEC mark of 18-18.

But it’s been a rapid plummet for the Commodores this season.

Two bright spots for Vandy heading into the Arkansas contest are forward Ven-Allen Lubin, who has averaged 13.8 points and 6.9 rebounds the last eight games, and guard Evan Taylor, who has shot 41 percent from three-point range over the past 10 contests.

This story was first published by our sister publication Nashville Post.