Stanford vs Gonzaga Redux

Happy Thanksgiving from C and R! We are thankful Stanford will be back in town tomorrow and R gets to escape her house and life as a shut-in following shoulder surgery twice this weekend!

Heard from TG, who answered most of our questions from out last posting. Faithful readers with nothing to do will remember that we asked how others “saw” the game. TG said he utilized the “All-Access” pass you can get through Stanford’s website, we believe. He commented” no commentator, just audio from the court announcer and crowd noise. Miss all the insightful commentary :), but it's better than watching chess pawns shoot baskets.” (Meaning that gawd-awful game tracker).

And we also asked how Stanford barely squeaked by with a win when we beat them by 30 points last year. Here, let him tell you: (comments in parenthesis are ours)

1.  Great, great, energy in the Gonzaga sell-out crowd of 6,000.  Wonderful statement for women's BB in Spokane. (Yes, and their coach asked the community to fill the place for every game, not just this special occasion-let’s hope they do)

2.  Courtney Vandersloot is one of the best guards in the country.  She finished with 24 points, 10 assists on 1 turnover, and threw in 7 rebounds, 3 steals, and a blocked shot just for good measure.  Off the charts.

3. Stanford defensive rebounding was awful.  We gave them 21 offensive boards, to our 15, and overall rebounds were tied at 49.  Trees need to play like trees! (!!)

4.  On the other hand, it's probably the only time Gonzaga will lose at home all season-- they had a 19-game home streak broken, and they’ll easily make the NCAA tournament, and probably win at least a couple of games. (Ah, that answered the question about Gonzaga’s dramatic improvement)

5. Overall, a good, tough early season road win for the Cardinal - with lots of room for improvement. (We would say so!)

TG

OMG, did you catch “Trees need to play like trees!” We smell another T-shirt if that keeps up, hee hee. Thanks for the insight, TG, don’t go startin’ your own blog or anything, your comments are always welcome here!

Oh, forget to give a shout out to Kayla Pedersen! She almost scored a triple double against Gonzaga, scoring 8 points, grabbed 10 rebounds, and dished out 8 assists, which would have been the first since Nicole Powell had three in the 2001-02 season. But fear not, Kayla set a different record. The 10 rebounds put her at 1006! She is just the fourth player in Stanford women’s basketball history to do that. Who else is in the “1,000 rebound club”? Oh just Jayne Appel (Jayne!), the aforementioned Nicole Powell and Val Whiting. And… and, she is just 257 rebounds away from Apples record mark of 1263. You go, Kayla! Show them what Trees can do!

Mark your calendars. Stanford plays Friday against South Carolina at 1:00 PM and then gets a televised date with Texas at 12:30 on Sunday. See ya there!