Arkansas junior forward Sarah Watkins scored a season-high 21 points to propel the Razorbacks to an upset of No. 22 Vanderbilt. Photo by File Photo.
Arkansas put the clamps down defensively Thursday night against Vanderbilt to pick up its second Southeastern Conference win 69-47.
The Commodores came into the game ranked No. 22 but committed 22 turnovers. Arkansas senior forward Ashley Daniels had a game-high six rebounds to go with her 17 points.
“Vanderbilt is a team that if you let them get the edge over you, they just kind of continue to go and push it,” Daniels said. “So our game plan was to just come out, try to take it at them first on the defensive end. And on the defensive end it went really well for us. Sarah (Watkins) started off really well for us and it just kind of pushed us to keep it going and to play hard.”
Junior Sarah Watkins led the team in scoring with 21 points, scoring 12 of in the first half. Watkins also had a career high six blocks.
The win against Vanderbilt was the second game of the season that both Daniels and Watkins reached double digits in points.
Vanderbilt (14-4, 2-3 SEC) came in Bud Walton Arena as the leading scoring team in the SEC, but the Razorbacks were able to hold them well below their game average of 74.4.
“I don’t think anybody was even thinking they were ranked,” Watkins said. “It’s just you’ve got to come out and play every SEC team to your best ability. These are quality wins. They mean more than the non-conference wins I think. Any game in the SEC will take you a lot farther with a win.”
Arkansas dished out 21 assists while just commiting 14 turnovers. Senior point guard C’eira Ricketts led the team in assists with seven while also chipping in eight points and getting four steals.
“They got off to a great start and kept us in it,” coach Tom Collen said. “We passed the ball well. We ran offense a little better than we ran it before. We took pretty care of the ball the first half except for those couple of minutes right there at the end. It’s a big win for us.”
The Razorbacks built an 11-2 lead to start the game, before Vanderbilt was able to score again, making the game 11-4.
Arkansas was able to hold the Commodores to only 24 first half points.
“We didn’t have anything specific but just to make our defense better,” Daniels said. “To play our game and not allow them to expose us at things we were getting exposed for earlier in the year. We kind of just came in practice and got the kinks out and it worked for us.”
The team went into halftime 37-24 on a 3-point buzzer beater by senior Lyndsay Harris.
The Razorbacks extended their lead at the start of the second half, making the score 48-28.
“Coach told us to take our open shots and along with that he was like if you take the shots you’ve got to crash and as long as we were making the effort on the rebounding end, it really didn’t matter if it went in or not,” Daniels said.
Arkansas took their largest lead of the game with less than 10 minutes left going ahead by 23.
The Razorbacks were able to hold Vanderbilt’s and the SEC’s leading scorer, Christina Foggie, to 14 points. Foggie came into the game averaging 17.9 points per game this season.
“They stepped up and they did it in a big way,” Collen said. “I think it’s going to mean a lot for our confidence. When you’re faced with playing a top 25 team and you’re 1-4 and you have to turn around in two days to go play arguably another top 25 team at LSU that’s playing real well right now, you sure want to go in there with a little bit of confidence feeling like you can win.”
The Razorbacks heads to Baton Rouge, La., next to take on LSU Sunday.