Shea Ralph let the referees know exactly how she felt about their performance.
The Vanderbilt women’s basketball coach received what she said was her first career ejection in five seasons with the prorgram after going off on the officials during her team’s shocking 89-78 loss to No. 24 Ole Miss in the SEC Tournament quarterfinals Friday night.
With her fifth-ranked team trailing by 22 early in the fourth quarter, Ralph lost her cool.
“How is that a f–king foul,” she first asked a male referee.
Ralph then pivoted to another zebra.
“You can’t call that,” she seemed to say. “You suck. You suck ass.”
That referee apparently didn’t like being told they “suck ass” and booted Ralph from the game, with Ralph giving her team high-fives before exiting.
“I wasn’t trying to get kicked out,” Ralph said. “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, then 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.”
Ralph chose her words carefully to avoid getting fine, but she called for consistency from all involved.
The final tally had Ole Miss committing 23 fouls to Vanderbilt’s 21, but she felt the Rebels got away with some physical defense against SEC Player of the Year Mikayla Blakes.
Blakes shot 0 for 10 in the first half, including 0 for 5 from 3, and scored one point.
She rallied for 23 points in the second half.
“I also thought she was fouled,” Ralph said. “She was being held, and there’s only so many ways you can respond to that. 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.”
Blake’s second-half surge helped Vanderbilt make a run after a horrendous first quarter that put it in a 25-6 hole before, 49-17, at the half.
But even 61 points in the second half was not enough to overcome such a large deficit.
“I just told (forward) Sacha (Washington) on the way over here, ‘Maybe I should have gotten kicked out sooner,’ in terms of the way that they played, the fight that they showed, the togetherness” Ralph joked.
The Commodores had been projected as a No. 2 seed in ESPN’s latest bracket Friday night, although this loss could affect their seeding.
“This changes nothing about our season,” Ralph said. “This changes nothing about what we’ve done,” Ralph said, “I think it only adds fuel to the fire for what’s ahead.”
