Vanderbilt is looking forward to a stronger season

Her return ushers in a new era at the program, which saw sophomore Khamil Pierre unexpectedly depart this summer. But Washington, who missed the 2024-25 season after she was diagnosed with a blood clot in her leg, along with Coach Shea Ralph, told reporters on Tuesday that there’s a lot to look forward to this year.

For starters, Washington is basketball ready. It was a “hard process” getting there, she admitted, but the experience “put things into perspective.” The team recently welcomed several new players, including freshmen Aubrey Galvan, Ava Black, and Monique Williams, as well as Ndjakalenga Mwenetanda, who transferred in from the University of Texas.

“I’m excited for the growth that we have coming in,” Washington added. “I’m excited to work with this group — all I really want to do is compete and have fun, [and] that’s really what we want to have for each other.”

Vanderbilt, who saw their March Madness bid end early in the first round after suffering a 77-73 loss to Oregon in overtime, has “elevated,” Washington said.

And Washington sees her role in maintaining that elevation by serving as a team leader something she is comfortable with despite her year off. Washington, who volunteered in local elementary schools for over 40 hours last season while she was unable to play, also said that she’s enjoying mentoring the team’s younger players.

One thing she encourages them to keep in mind is that “every day’s not going to be a rainbow day, so working through the hard stuff, leaning on each other, [is important].”

The Commodores weren’t able to bring in another player after Pierre’s late departure, but Ralph feels confident in the team’s capabilities and said that it wasn’t difficult to adapt to the change. “Our program is our program,” she said. “So the people that come in here and compete with us are who we have. And so the adjustments have been very seamless. We’re out here competing every single day.”

One of those newcomers is Mwenetanda, who spent most of her time at Texas as a role player but is expected to have an expanded presence in Nashville.

“Ndjakalenga comes in with pedigree,” Ralph said, a reference to Texas’ Final Four appearance last season. “She’s competed at the highest level. She’s gone to the Final Four, which is where we want to go. So automatically, she elevated practice, she elevated tools, she elevated just the way that we work, because she works at such a high level.”

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Of newcomer Galvan, Ralph admitted she has work to do (or, as she put it, “doesn’t know her ass from her elbow, because she’s a freshman”), “but she works, and she loves playing basketball.”

The combination of Mwenetanda and Galvan “brings some competitiveness … some confidence, and a lot of versatility that we’ll be able to utilize on both ends of the court.” Galvan, who Ralph also said plays with “flair,” will also likely have an outsized role on the team in the wake of Madison Greene‘s injury (the program announced Greene will miss the entire 2025-26 season after she suffered an injury during practice on September 1).

And, of course, there is no conversation about Vanderbilt that isn’t also a conversation about Mikayla Blakes, at least not these days. The sophomore is set to continue to build on a freshman season that culminated with SEC Freshman of the Year and a consensus second team All-American nod, an average of 23.3 points per game, and multiple 50-point performances — not to mention her debut with Team USA over the summer.

Ralph doesn’t doubt that there’s even more Blakes can do this season, and her primary focus will be playing the team’s superstar off the ball. “Combo guard is essentially what we wanted to grow [Blakes] into anyway,” she explained. “But now having Aubrey [Galvan] … it’ll be the same way that having Aubrey ball dominant a lot of times, or another kind of option for us to handle the ball is going to be able to put Mikayla in a bunch of different positions, and it feels like Mikayla won’t have to be that person scoring the ball so much.”

As the team prepares for the upcoming season, they’re also impacted by what’s happening inside the larger world of basketball, whether that’s the NCAA or WNBA. When asked if she’s spoken to her players about Napheesa Collier‘s statement pertaining to WNBA leadership earlier in the day, Ralph said those are “conversations we have in there,” while gesturing toward her office, a window-lined room adjacent to the team’s practice court.

“We encourage those [conversations] all the time,” she told The IX Basketball. “When it’s time to work on ourselves, we work on ourselves. but in the conversations we have in our offices … that’s an opportunity for us to shed light on, ‘Hey, what do you think about that? What would you have said, or how would you have responded if that had happened to you? What do you think they should have done?’

Having those conversations is, per Ralph, a “great way to build camaraderie, [and to] educate them on it, [to say], ‘Okay, these are the rules, this is what happens. That’s what happened in the league.'” Her players might be college students, but, as Ralph mentioned, they’re paying attention and watching, so they will bring these topics up.

The Vanderbilt Commodores will first face off against Memphis Tigers on Oct. 27 in the preseason 2025 Hoops for St. Jude Tip Off Classic at FedEx Forum before heading to Paris, France, to play the California Bears as part of the Aflac Oui-Play 2025 event.

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