The NCAA women’s tournament’s ‘spiciest play-in game’ has a lot of Philly flavor

If you watched the women’s NCAA Tournament selection show on Sunday, you might have seen ESPN analyst Andraya Carter say the Columbia-Vanderbilt First Four matchup “might be the spiciest play-in game so far.”

That’s because after Columbia lost the Ivy League tournament final on Saturday, Lions coach Megan Griffith lobbied for her team to get an at-large NCAA bid by saying: “The NCAA talks about wanting to grow the game and we just consistently put SEC teams in that are 15-14.”

Well, Griffith got her wish — but maybe a little too on the nose. As it turns out, the spice of Columbia facing an SEC team is rather Philly-flavored.

Griffith, from King of Prussia, played basketball, volleyball, and lacrosse at Villa Maria Academy. She went to Columbia to play college hoops, but also to get an economics degree and enter the finance world. Two summers spent interning at Lincoln Financial Group seemed to confirm her direction.

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But one of Griffith’s workout partners back then, Ursinus alumnus and former European professional Dennis Stanton — who’s now the athletic director at Souderton Area High School — thought she could make it in Europe. So he gave her a nudge.

The nudge worked. Griffith played a few years in Europe, then returned the U.S. to coach: six seasons at Princeton, then back to her alma mater to try to topple the Tigers dynasty she helped build.

She hasn’t quite done it yet, but this year she came as close as anyone has in a long time. Columbia tied Princeton atop the Ivy League’s regular-season standings at 13-1, enough to go to the big dance for the first time and bring the conference two NCAA bids for just the second time.

There are two Philly-area players on Columbia’s bench: guards Ava Sciolla (Fairless Hills, Pennsbury) and Paige Lauder (Malvern, Villa Maria Academy).

And there’s an assistant coach from here, Allie Bassetti (Turnersville, Washington Township). Her past coaching experience includes stops at Rowan, the famed Philadelphia Belles travel team, and Neumann Goretti.

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But that’s not all. Vanderbilt (22-9) also has two players with local ties, though one won’t be playing in this game.

Sophomore guard Ryanne Allen, from Warminster, is an Archbishop Wood grad who suffered a season-ending knee injury in December.

Fellow sophomore guard Justine Pissott grew up in Toms River and played for the Belles — some years after Bassetti coached there. She was a McDonald’s All-American in 2022 and co-leads the Commodores in three-point shots made this season with 51.

Columbia and Vanderbilt, both No. 12 seeds, square off Wednesday (9 p.m., ESPNU) in Blacksburg, Va. The winner stays in town to face No. 5 seed Baylor on Friday (6 p.m., ESPNU), with No. 4 seed and host Virginia Tech or No. 13 seed Marshall awaiting after that.

And might Griffith’s barb at the SEC land on Vanderbilt’s locker room whiteboard? She laughed when asked Sunday night.

“Yeah, I’m sure it is,” she said. “We played Vanderbilt last year — we had a home-and-home with them, and with the pandemic and everything, it got pretty screwed up in terms of the years we were supposed to play them back-to-back. We wanted to play them again, and maybe this is just fate setting the table for us to do so.”