Stanford Women's Basketball is Your National Champions!

For the first time, since 1992, Tara VanDerveer and the Stanford Women's Basketball won the National Championship!

 You can almost call it the COVID bowl, as Stanford wasn't necessarily the best time, but they were the most resilient, and had a deeper bench then familiar foe and fellow Pac-12 school, Arizona in the finals. Much was made about their "nomad" season as they couldn't practice or play in Santa Clara County due to the restrictions and had to become road warriors living out of suitcases. So much so, that the Stanford faithful loving joked they should take a drink every time the networks mentioned they plight. And really, they almost gave the semi final game away to South Carolina, up by one, yet coughing up the ball in the final seconds and letting SC get not one, but two shots at the basket. Both missed and the Cardinal moved on the final.

See the SC highlights here:

Apparently, you can see the whole South Carolina- Stanford game here:

The finals were against Arizona, a team they had beaten twice previously this year, and if there is any team you don't want to play, it is a team you have already beaten twice previously. Odds are just not in your favor to beat them three times in one season. And Arizona also had one final shot, trailing by one, and although THREE Stanford defends went after Ari MacDonald of Arizona, she still got a shot off. It hit the left side of the rim and bounced up... and bounced away. Stanford pulled of an improbable win.

Check out the highlights, it still gives me chills!

I know this blog is way late, but I wanted to get the videos in here so I have something to look back on in the years to come! Just amazing!

Congrats to the road Warriors of the Stanford Women's Basketball team!

Follow C and R on Facebook and Twitter, too!

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Stanford Women’s Basketball Season Starting

Hidey ho Stanford Women’s Basketball fans! It’s the start of a new women’s basketball season and C and R are pumped! The good news is Stanford is ranked #3 in preseason polls. The bad news is Oregon, for the first time, is ranked #1. Oregon State comes in at #7, UCLA is #11, and Arizona State is #20, so nobody will be sleeping on the Pac-12 this year!

The second reason to be excited is that Stanford was busy in the off season, scoring the number two recruiting class, including NATIONAL player of the year Haley Jones. She is a local recruit, from nearby Santa Cruz who played at Mitty. This allows her parents to easily get to games at Maples and we met her De-lightful ,with a capital D, mom, Monique Jones. We want to be invited to Thanksgiving and just sit around shooting the breeze with her, she is amazing with great energy (We said we would put her in the blog! Hi Mama Jones). Haley was held out of the first exhibition game of the season as a precaution, but we should see her in action against the next exhibition game vs Team USA (with Sue Bird, Diana Taurasi, and our very own Nneka Ogwumike) on Nov 2.
But back to basketball…oh, did we tell you one of the freshies can dunk?


Photo courtesy of Stanford Women's Basketball
Stanford opened with an exhibition over Beijing Normal University, and in warm ups, just as C and R were stowing their coats, Fran dunked, so we missed that one, but many more to come (We hope). Also in the freshmen class is 6-5 forward Ashten Prechtel and Hannah Jump. We are going to need Ashten’s height, as Stanford seems to be a whole lot of speedy guards and forwards and not a lot of tall folk, as Beijing’s large center seemed to score whenever she got the ball near the basket.. Plus, when the announcer says her last name, our ears hear Pretzel, so that is her new nick name from us and we are going to be visiting the soft pretzel stand a lot this season!

Okay, back to the one game they have played, which was an exhibition against Beijing Normal University. The game opened with the two team’s national anthems and an exchange of gifts. It was neat to finds out that one of Stanford’s male practice player stood in as translator between the two teams when they meet before the game.

For the game itself, we are happy to report that five players scored in double figures, with Stanford shooting better than 63 percent in the 100-58 victory.

It was funny, when the game started, junior and returning starter Allyson Jerome was all over attacking the basket and running the fast break. She was lead scorer at the half. Freshie Fran got in the game and had a slow start in the first half, only to come on strong in the second. We were surprised she was high scorer, with 17 points on 8-of-10 shooting. Alyssa Jerome just missed with 16 points but didn't miss any of her seven attempts from the floor. Sophomore Lexie Hull added 14, Ashten had 12 and senior Anna Wilson added 11. It rained threes, with the team hitting 8-of-11 (.727) from 3-point range and the team also made 10 of its 13 free throw attempts (.769) on the night, which was a huge sore point last year.

Looking good, Stanford! Can’t wait for the season to start!

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