Well, what a week. First of all, the Stanford Women’s Basketball Team is the top seed in this weekend’s PAC-10 tournament (no surprise there). They play the winner of the Arizona-Washington State game on Friday.
Then the PAC-10 Awards came out. Stanford’s very own Nneka Ogwumike was named the PAC-10 Player of the Year. Congratulations, Nneka, and you deserved it. You took your good game and elevated it (pun intended) to the next level. When you wanted to free lance and get to the basket and score, you could almost at will. And congrats to Head Coach Tara VanDeveer, although she didn’t win the Pac-10 coach of the year award (UCLA’s Nikki Caldwell did, a Pat Summit product), Tara recognized what she needed to do to her program to let Nneka be successful (meaning not boxing her in to a rigid offensive set) and even sacrificed Jayne Appel’s role slightly to accommodate what Nneka does best. Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks?
There were several PAC-10 teams. The a 15-member All PAC-10 team featured four Stanford starters, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen, and Jeanette Pohlen.
Our fifth starter, Ros Gold-Onwude made the five-member All-Defensive team. Not a bad line up.
Other Stuff:
Jayne Appel’s ankle is still sore and she is questionable for the PAC-10 tournament.
Got a lot of nice responses to our piece by Riki Sorenson (aka Erica Mueser Sorenson '87). We hope others will prepare a little something to tell us what it was like before and after Tara VanDerveer came out west. Our number one fan (NOF) wrote that they still give out the “Lizard Lung” award to the most gullible freshmen. Sarah Boothe won it last year, awarded by the prior winner, Jeanette Pohlen. Our NOF also told us she couldn’t make it down to LA and had free tickets to the PAC-10 tournament and did C and R want to us them? We nearly tripped over each other trying to get to the computer fast enough to say yes, cats flying out of our way. Thanks, and now our NOF is now our Ultra NOF! We will do our best to report/observe/stalk all things Stanford. Hope I can get an Internet connection in LA. You know how backwards they are down south!
Other Basketball Stuff Not Stanford.
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the UConn’s women’s basketball history-breaking streak. UConn beat Notre Dame, ranked either 6th or 7th depending on what poll you have. It was there 71st consecutive victory, an NCAA record. They beat the streak of 70 held by the 2001-3 UConn team. Is it correct that this class of sophomores have never lost a college game?
So let’s talk about the all time record in college basketball, men’s or women’s, the UCLA men’s 88 game record, set in the 1970’s, is the penultimate record to chase now. Can UConn get there? Well, we hope Stanford can beat them in the NCAA tournament this year. There is a ray of hope. Notre Dame played UConn three times this season. The first time ND lost 70-46 in January, then lost 76-51 in the beginning of March, now they ONLY lost 59-44. For this game, Notre Dame kept it close for a half. Sound familiar Stanford fans? An UConn fan wrote the streak was wearing on the team a little, the team looked tired, Maya Moore looked tired, had no legs…hmmm, upset coming? UConn got a scare when Caroline Doty suffered a head injury in that game, and although played the next game, she only scored 1 point in 16 minutes. UConn won that, too, to win the BIG East championship and push the streak to 72 games. Maya Moore and Tina Charles each had an off night, so the score was only 60-32, UConn. Hmmm…maybe upset not coming!
Pac-10 tourney starts tomorrow.
Stanford plays Friday. Hope Jayne’s ankle had miraculously healed by then.
More Stanford Stuff, (but not UConn) at the original C and R's Stanford Women's Basketball Blog
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