Stanford Stuff--Coaches and Players

Lots happening in the off-season for Stanford Women’s Basketball. First of all, they hired Trina Patterson as assistant coach. Patterson has a ton of head coaching experience, so at first C and R couldn’t figure out why she would step back to an assistant role. But then half the coaching world would give their right arm to learn at the master’s feet, those feet belonging to Stanford Head Coach Tara Vanderveer. Oh hear, let Trina tell you in her own words and more elegantly, quoted from the official Stanford website:
"Tara is one of the finest coaches in the country and I could not be more excited to work with her, the players and the staff. I will embrace the culture at Stanford which highlights a world-class education with world-class athletics. I look forward to working hard and bringing energy, knowledge and passion."

In other basketball news, sisters Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike were named as finalists for the USA Basketball World University Games Team. They will return to the Olympic Training center in late July to finalize the roster and go to the World University Games in China in mid August. They will be hanging around with (or as C and R like to think of it, spying on) other college standouts and such as Skylar Diggins of Notre Dame (if only she chose Stanford!) Jackie Gemelos of USC (current Pac-12 foe), Shekinna Stricklen and Glory Johnsonof Tennessee (What’s Pat Summit really like?) and Odyssey Simms of current consensus number one Baylor. Hmm, notice no Texas A&M players in that mix of finalists.

May and June starts the graduation season all over this land and C and R would be remiss if they didn’t give a little shout out to our good basketball friend P’s niece for graduating from nursing school at San Jose State! Congrats!