Game Hangover

Hi, C here, and sorry to be so absent, but I was working with the little kiddies in the past two days and not near a computer. Besides, what more needs to be said about the Stanford Women’s Basketball team losing the National Title game to UConn that has not been said?

I was going to play good stat/bad stat, but it just depressed me too much. (You hold the number one team to 17% shooting and 12 first half points, they only have scored 31 points with 10 minutes left in the game, you think you are going to win….but no, you end up shooting 26 % for the game yourself and set a record for futility. What hurts the most about this is we lost the game, beat ourselves, a few more points and we win…but wait, I wasn't going to torture myself and the C and R fans still out there by reliving this game…)

Here, you can look up the good stats/bad stats yourself. Also, check out these records set or broken, courtesy of the Stanford Fast Break Club (wow, Nneka set the Stanford single season record for rebounds).

On to happier thoughts, stepping back from that April game, this truly was an amazing team and fun to watch, too. Both Kayla Pedersen and Nneka Ogwumike said this was their favorite team of all time. To make it to the championship game, to stay focused on the prize since October, to commit to that mission while taking challenging college coursework, that was very hard to do. The 2009-2010 Stanford Women’s Basketball team has our utmost respect and admiration.

Kayla Pedersen and Nneka Ogwumike did make the Final Four all-tournament team. Nneka also got invited to work out with Team USA under UConn coach Geno Auriemma. Jayne Appel was supposed to go, too, but now that it has been revealed that Jayne had a painful stress facture in her foot for about a month now, she is not going (not sure if that was Geno’s decision or Jayne’s).

Jayne Appel was drafted in the WNBA. She didn’t go second as predicted, which would have landed her in Minnesota with former Stanford player Candice Wiggins. She did go fifth to San Antonio. We can only wonder if her poor performance the last few weeks due to injury played a part in that. She will make about $49,000 a year. Maybe she can play two-three years and get enough money for law school and get on with the rest of her life. Jayne was a warrior with the injury and is putting a good face on where she ended up in the WNBA. C and R wish her nothing but the best.

Sorry this is so somber. Even the players were hard pressed to be cheerful when a number of fans showed up at the Stanford campus to welcome them back. One comment of note, head coach Tara VanDerveer said (the crowd today) was more than the fans in her first two years at Stanford. And isn’t that what it should be about? Supporting this incredible women’s sports team, no matter what their record?

Sigh. WNBA starts May 15th.

More depressing Stanford stuff at the original C and R's Stanford Women's Basketball Blog