Stanford Beats UConn in OT 88-86

There are so many outstanding moments to highlight in Stanford’s come-from-behind, overtime win over #1 UConn, ending a 47-game win streak. Yes, that’s right, we said it... The Stanford Women’s Basketball team beat UConn!!

Nom, Nom Nom
That is the sound of C and R eating their words. Heck, it is the sound of the Nation eating their words. NO one believed Stanford could do it, not the National Media, not the local media, not UConn, not the Stanford fans, not the bloggers and tweeters, including us, Stanford’s biggest homer fans. Heck, even Stanford Head Coach Tara VanDerveer was hedging her bets, saying in a SJ Merc article that this will be a great learning situation regardless of the score, just want to see the team battle. Mea Culpe to you, Stanford team.

Stanford's Amber Orrange (33) takes on UConn (Nhat V. Meyer/Bay Area News Group)

So, as we said, there are so many great moments in this game. The Freshmen Kaylee  Johnson pulling down big boards (wonder how those announcers faired on ESPN2 with the two Johnsons, Kaylee and Kailee, no relation, and the two Samuelson sisters, who are related and what about youngest Samuelson going to UConn? Think she is regretting that decision right about now? But we digress).

Oh yeah, big plays: Stanford guards Amber Orrange and Lili Thonpson driving the lane for baskets in TVD’s new offense, including Amber’s pair of lay ins in the final seconds to keep it close. Or how about Amber’s three with 1.4 seconds left in regulation to tie the game at 77? UConn guarded the Samuelsons but left Amber alone…BAM. Lili was flying all over the floor and scored 24, including two free throws to cut the lead to 71-70 with 42 seconds to play. However it was Amber Orrange’s 17 points at key, key points that kept Stanford in it. Amber even made a go-ahead jumper with 1:38 left in overtime, and was trending on twitter, something that is hard to do for women’s sports.

And what about D? In overtime, Stanford forced a 5-second violation and prevented the Huskies from getting off a final shot on OT. Stanford shut down UConn’s three point shooter, Kalena Mosqueda-Lewis. She was guarded primarily by Karlie Samuelson, had only two points in the half. She only got four shots off and missed them all. Her points came on the free-throw line. She finally made her first basket, a three, with 9:40 left in regulation. UConn’s preseason All-America Breana Stewart, at one point in the second half, scored about 8 points in like, two seconds to start to pull UConn away, and C turned to R and said, oh no, here we go. She looks like a player who could take over a game, like our very own Nneka Ogwumike. And then she disappeared. If she can learn that skill to go for the kill, then they will be unstoppable. This variation of UConn looked beatable.

But, there before the grace of god go I...or us...or Stanford. Really, with a two point win in OT, it was really just one bad foul call away from going the other way. I just want to give a shout out to all the UConn fans I saw in social media. They were gracious, and if there were any bad sports, C and R don’t want to hear about them. Yes, this is just the second game of the season, both teams will look very differently in March, when the games really count. We know, we know. Someone on twitter said, after watching the Stanford student body storm the court, geez, Stanford acts like they won the National Championship or something. When you feel like an underdog, and it is reflected back to you by so many outside sources, this IS a national championship, a very hard thing to win, and something that those players will remember forever.

Looking forward to a great season! C and R really, really mean it this time!

Follow C and R on Facebook and Twitter, too! Where if we are not writing our words, we are eating them!

---

Stanford Beats up on Boston College

There is a saying in sports about a full scheduled of games, and it goes something like, “Take it one game at a time.” So with the Stanford Women’s Basketball Team showing a great second half of basketball to beat Boston College 96-63, C and R will try to talk only about this game and not what comes next… which is UConn, the preseason favorite to repeat as National Champions.

The Stanford guards harassed BC’s back court and got three steals each which I think they converted all into lay ups (Can they repeat this against UConn… oh darn, we said we weren’t going to do that). The guards also pushed the ball up the court and made some great passes to some front court players who were cutting well and very open, only to have those players not be able to put the ball in the basket. This allowed BC to stick around and tie the game with about 6 minutes left before Stanford started pulling away.

To be fair, BC hit a lot of threes in the first half, nine to be exact. Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer, the master of half time adjustments simply said at the break, "If they make a 3 on you, you're coming out," What motivates some…however, guess how many threes BC made in the second…that’s right, zero. They shot five times behind the arc after that half time statement and missed them all. No one had to sit down and Tara got to give all 15 players some playing time.

Ball screens worked well, but will faster players adjust to them better? (Sorry, sorry, sorry, said we wouldn’t do that). Also, Stanford players attacked the basket with dribble penetration, something C and R have not seen a lot of in the last few years. I think the players like taking it to the other team and did not show fear.

Lili Thompson (Photo: Brant Ward / The Chronicle

Guard Lili Thompson scored a career high 26 points, hitting three of four three-pointers.  BC knocked her down, twice, on hard screens, the second time she had to limp to the bench and leave the game, only to come back later and hit two of those threes. Erica McCall also had a career high with 16 points, and she looked eager to grab rebounds.

Stanford had four players in double figures. Guard Amber Orrange had 11 points and was leading rebounder with nine. Taylor Greenfield scored 10 and relished her freedom to drive to the basket. All the freshmen scored, with Kaylee (Kale) Johnson getting the start and Brittany McPhee hitting her first shot, a three.

And how did UConn do on their first game on their West Coast Tour? They beat UC Davis 102-43, including  a 39-0 run. The Huskies made 18 three-pointers, Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis tied Maya Moore's school record with 10 three-pointers for 30 points in just 24 minutes. Wonder if VanDerveer would give the same ultimatum at half time? (PS, Geno is going to wine country before Monday’s game. C and R can only hope he goes off on some sort of wine bender and can’t find his way to the team bus! We kid, we love you Geno!)

Whoops, wasn’t going to mention UConn. However, to be fair, TVD has said it is a win-win situation playing them regardless of the outcome. It will only help Stanford get better. And it will be fun to watch the team’s growth the rest of the season.

Follow C and R for more UConn...I mean, Stanford stuff on Facebook and Twitter, too!

---

Stanford Loses to UConn

Well, it comes as no surprise that the Stanford Women's Basketball Team lost to UConn tonight by a score of 76-57. Since Stanford "only" lost by 19, it was a moral victory of sorts after getting blown out at home last year.

Stanford Head Coach Tara VanDerveer said some insightful things, saying now her young team (Five Freshmen) now know “what the best team plays like”. And "I think this kind of let our team know we're 20 points away."

We could concentrate on what Stanford did wrong, but we hate to kick a player when they are down. So instead let’s focus on what UConn did right. Oh wait, let’s let Coach Tara tell the players what they did wrong, "We gave up too many `O' boards for baskets. We sent them to the free throw line for no reason. We need to do little things correctly and focus on that for the rest of the season."

Chiney Ogwumike double teamed again -(AP Photo/Jessica Hill)

Getting back to UConn, they played smothering defense at the three-point line and also did not let Stanford get the ball inside (that’s tough to do). Coach kept putting in three-point specialist Bonnie Samuelson and occasionally her freshmen sister, but there were no open looks to be found there. Bonnie was 0-2 behind the line and Karlie did not get a shot off. And Stanford could not get it inside to their star, Chiney Ogwumike. When they did, she was pushed outside the paint and outside her comfort zone (like last year). Chiney took her obligatory one-shot-a-game-outside-the-paint and made it, but when she is limited inside, as UConn showed, she has a hard time scoring.

Both teams started out cold, staying stuck at 2-2 for about five minutes. UConn had one of their stars, Breanna Stewart go to the bench with two early fouls (and the new, tougher foul-calling did seem to favor Stanford), but their bench is deep. Very deep.

Let’s list some things Stanford did right. Amber Orrrrange. Stanford did Amber Orrange right, or rather Amber Orrange did Stanford right. She scored from just about anywhere and really kept Stanford in the game. She set a new career-high with 22 points, Chiney, while limited by long tall bodies such as UConn’s Stephanie Dolson and then Kiah Stokes, still posted a double-double with 16 points and 13 boards. That was her 60th-career double-double, and second of the season. Mikaela Ruef played well, especially in the first 10 minutes or so, and grabbed nine rebounds. Freshmen guard Lili Thompson was also a bright spot. She scored six, but when she first went in she showed plenty of fire and energy, something a typical Stanford player needs more of. She called for the ball and aggressively drove to the basket when UConn was trying to limit that. And she popped two threes with authority, getting her first collegiate three (collegiate, that’s the biggest word C and R know!).

Chiney Ogwumike and Amber Orrrrange combined for 38 of Stanford’s 57 points, although we are not so sure that is a good thing. And that in a nutshell is how Stanford’s season went last year, and how this year is starting off. Chiney, Amber and ???? It showed tonight. The good news is there is a whole season for someone to emerge.

Scary moment when Chiney went down (yes, she lost a contact earlier, about the 60th time in her career, too, but this was different). Chiney was on the ground during an offensive rebound and UConn’s Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis inadvertently tripped over her, landing hard on her elbow. She shrieked in pain while a completely silent arena of 10,000 plus people held their breath. She was taken to the locker room and did not return, and it looked at least dislocated. Chiney is pals with her from USA basketball and we could see on the replays she looked very disheartened when Kaleena went down. Basketball fans everywhere hope she will heal quickly.

Well, Tara took the couches out of the players’ locker room and replaced them with cardio machines. Now they know they need another 20 points to be in the hunt for at least the final four. What else can Tara do?

Follow C and R on Facebook and Twitter, too!

---

.

Stanford Struggles with UConn

Groan. It’s not that C and R can’t take a loss, it’s the way that the Stanford Women’s Basketball team lost to archrival UConn. They were embarrassed.

Here’s the thing, this is how C and R thought this season would go. Not that we want to be Negative Nellie’s but let’s look at last year. Pull up any box score from the 2011-2012 season and you’ll see Nneka Ogwumike high scorer and Chiney second-high scorer, and the sisters will have combined for half or more of Stanford’s total points. If the team were lucky, maybe a third person would break double figures or get to 10. And Chiney scored most by rebounding Nneka’s misses, or if they doubled Nneka, Chiney could knife inside, and make the other team pay. Take Nneka out of that equation, since she graduated, and you have one prolific scorer and not a whole lot of help. C and R predicted that all opponents would have to do is double Chiney and no one would step up.

And that is exactly what UConn did. Credit to them, they had a definite and exacting game plan and stuck to it, because frankly, Stanford could not or did not adjust. More on that later.

Chiney Ogwumike is doubled-teamed by UConn - Sean Harvey / SF Chron

So what did UConn do? First, they took away Chiney. Big tall Stephanie Dolson, who is a true 6’5, guarded her. Then when Chiney touched the ball one or two more people came over on her. The result was she was off balanced and pushed out away for the basket more than normal.

But here’s the rub. When two and then three people are double teaming you, there should be other people open. But for Stanford, no one cut to the basket or got in a passing lane to give an option to Chiney. The other offensive players were just standing around, used to Chiney scoring. And when she did miss, and three defenders have effectively walled Chiney off from the rebound, no one else from Stanford rebounded. Although we did note Stanford’s two guards would back pedal on defense to limit UConn’s fast break chances, so they were just following orders. But where were the forwards? Joslyn Tinkle, who celebrated her birthday on game day, had just two points for the game. It was not good basketball.

So Stanford went to plan B. Amber Orrrrange, playing point, would drive down the middle, to meet Stephanie Dolson. Amber could not get a good shot off, sometimes eating the ball and looking to pass it back outside. She scored zero points for the game.

Rinse and repeat those two scenarios. To the tune of 13 first half points for Stanford and 31 for UConn. What was really frustrating was Stanford Head Coach Tara VanDerveer, who is the master of the adjustment at the half, did not seem to adjust enough to try something different.

The third thing UConn did was press in the backcourt. Stanford is notorious for not being able to handle the press, but this was ridiculous. Either the ball would get stolen, and it was mostly Amber that was the victim of those steals or now the shot clock was eaten up and Stanford had to rush their shot selection. Stanford had 14 turnovers for the game that resulted in 15 points for UConn. And UConn is not the kind of team you want to fall behind.

But the worst thing is Stanford did not play smart. TVD said her team was doing things “out of character”. Some of it was little things, such as when Toni Kokenis’ defensive player fell down, she passed to a guarded player instead of taking a wide open shot. And some of it was big. In the second half, Stanford did adjust and figure out how to break the full court press. The guard bringing the ball up would throw to an open player at the half court line. And here is where all of Maples was flummoxed. That player would turn to the basket and there would be three white shirts against two navy shirts and instead of attacking the basket and taking advantage of the numbers, they would wait and hold the ball, letting UConn get all five players back on D and then start their rotation, shot clock ticking down. And this happened a lot. The Maples crowd at first exhorted their team to press it forward. Then the crowd booed. I have never, ever heard the Stanford fans boo their own team.

So Dolson is limiting Chiney and Stanford can’t go down the middle when she is in there. So when Dolson does go to the bench for long stretches, Stanford….stops attacking the middle and does not get it to Chiney? What? Instead they stuck to this very exacting rotation of players, who move one at a time. No cuts or quick movements without the ball. And when a Stanford player did catch the ball, they stood flatfooted, not in a triple threat or looking to shoot over their defender. Their body language said "I am waiting for the next rotation to pass and will not drive or shoot on you". That makes for easy defending.

Stanford did have a mini run when Bonnie Samuelson got two threes and Geno got T’ed up for hassling the refs. (If you call going from down 23 to down 15 a mini run). And guess what? Dolson was on the bench for that run. She came back in, scored a basket and that put the lid on anything, because, Stanford had still not altered their game plan.

The one time in the second half when Stanford pushed the ball against UConn’s press, Mikaela Ruef took the ball to the basket hard. Big Stephanie Dolson stepped up to defend and Ruef jumped up, and forward into Dolson. Their bodies met and although Ruef took a hard spill on the floor, Dolson was called with her third foul, as the refs will favor the offense in a meeting of the bodies. Smart. So, does Stanford even try that again? No. Do that one more time and Dolson has four fouls and would go to the bench and you can have some breathing room. But no, no one tries that. Chiney again catches the ball and jumps up and backwards to try to get away from Dolson’s arms and the result is another missed shot and another rebound scooped up by UConn. Not smart.

How ugly was this? Let’s quote some statistics. Well, the final score was 61-35. At one point in the first half, the score was 22-7. Stanford was 5-22 in the first half for a 15% completion rate, and a little better in the second, going 6-24 for 25%. That makes 19% for the game. That was Stanford’s lowest single-game shooting effort and fewest field goals made. Stanford was also uncharacteristically ineffective at the line, going 11-20. Ruef was 0-4, and scored zero points for the game .Oh, silver lining, it wasn’t Stanford’s worst home loss, that was a 1983 96-51 loss to Long Beach State before Tara’s time. And Chiney did score 18 points in this game. It just seemed like she missed all her shots. No one else for Stanford reached double figures.

UConn had a balanced offensive attack, with four players in double figures. Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis had 19, and three players had ten, with an additional bench player with nine. How balanced is that?

As bad as Stanford was, why hasn’t the rest of this season’s games gone this way? Why did other Stanford players step up in those games and not here? How did Stanford get to be 11-0 before this game if a team can so easily exploit their weaknesses? The rest of the season will be interesting to watch.

Follow C and R on Facebook and Twitter, to see if Stanford can recover from this game.

---

.

WNBA Weekend

This weekend was the Nneka Ogwumike Weekend in LA, to watch her play in the pros, arranged by the Stanford Fast Break booster club.

First we would like to thank the Stanford Fast Break Club and Otis Watson in particular for their efforts to arrange the trip. Several LA Sparks officials spoke to our gathering and person after person said what a wonderful, charming, mature, smart person Nneka, the Stanford Women’s Basketball Alum, was. It’s nice to see they discovered in a few short months what we had for four years. They also said they don’t remember a booster club making an effort to support a player out of college like this, traveling en masse and arranging events, so that was kinda neat. Also, C was one number, one number away from winning Nneka’s autographed jersey! Thanks for arranging the prizes, too.

So C and R are sitting there in the private suite eating dinner with other Fast Break Club Supporters, minding their own business when this handsome gentleman asks if he can join us. C and R being ever so hospitable, say sure. R asks if he is from the Stanford area and he answers no. He’s Nneka’s agent. Oh darn! Turns out he is Orlando Castano, Jr. of 4Front Sports. C pumps him full of questions for the next 25 minutes, questions we had for Nneka anyway, such as what endorsement deals does she have in the works?

He said Nneka is Team Nike, which we are glad to hear because they are high profile and seem to take an active interest in promoting women athletes. She has a shoe contract. Also she has a yogurt deal and two trading cards deals. He said the first trading card deal is automatically given to the first four women of the draft. The second one he worked out of Leaf trading card and they normally don’t deal with women. Also he got the same monetary deal as the men pro athletes get, and we thought that was terrific. Much scouring of the Internet and the Leaf site brought us this announcement about Nneka Ogwumike's card, so if Leaf Cards they are serious about selling Nneka, they need to do a better job promoting it.

We also asked Orlando about the recent report about Nneka going to Poland in the off  season. Last we had heard Nneka wanted to go back to Stanford and get her MBA. Stanford even gave her a postgraduate scholarship. Now we read she will try to take correspondence courses while overseas. He said he worked out a good deal for Poland and then the next few years overseas as well. It was here we revealed we were bloggers and were going to print just about everything we talked about (everything you say can and will be used against you!) and let him take back anything he didn’t want to see in print, because our little blog is so high profile. He said maybe not sure the exact next- few-years plans. So if you really want to know what’s in the works for Nneka in the next few years come up to C and R on the sly and whisper out of the side of your mouth you want to know what insider information we have. Then we will have to kill you! Just kidding, but we feel so special! LOL!

Nneka’s agent also said he was trying to work out a deal to make Nneka the face of the Girl Scouts. It was Girl Scout night for the Sparks, Laurel Richie, current WNBA president, was the former head of the Girl Scouts, Nneka was a girl scout, a perfect marketing storm, and just goes to show you there are no coincidences in sports or marketing. By the way, anyone know the CEO of Chipolte? Nneka’s agent would love to talk to him/her.
Another thing he shared was if she averages a certain amount of points and rebounds by the end of the season, she gets a bonus from Nike. Talk about pressure. We were nervous for her all game to make her numbers. Wonder if other WNBA stars have that kind of deal?

Nneka’s Mom
As a special guest, Nneka’s mother, Ify Ogwumike flew in for the weekend. We said hi to her, having met several times at Stanford. We said we blog about Nneka. She said it was nice to put a name to the face but we are sure she was just being polite. We shared this on twitter at the time, but the apple sure doesn’t fall from the tree. Mama Ogwumike is just as warm and personable as we find Nneka. And so intelligent, just a pleasure to talk to. You just want to be in their orbit. We asked can you believe how far Nneka has gone from dribbling in the driveway to college awards to a number one pick in the pros, and she said no she still can’t believe it, especially from parents that had no idea that talent in sports could lead to anything.

We also talked about younger sister Chiney, still back at Stanford…ah Chiney, Mama Ogwumike says Chiney is the wind for Nneka and Nneka herself has said Chiney has given her the confidence. Then all three of us said laughed and said Chiney has all the confidence she needs. Now Stanford fans, C and R included, are worried about this upcoming Stanford season without superstar Nneka. Secretly C looked up Chiney’s high school record to see how she did in the 2 years without Nneka. Sure enough, she won a championship without Nneka. So when R asked about the upcoming season Mama Ogwumike said don’t worry about Chiney. When Nneka is around she defers to her, when she is by herself the real Chiney will come out. She also said we ain’t seen what Chiney can do. So Stanford fans, you heard it straight from the proverbially horse’s mouth we are in for some awesome Chiney talent.

Rebecca Lobo
ESPN announcer Holly Rowe was supposed to come and speak to the group, but had a previous engagement. So they got the ESPN announcer who was calling the game that night: Rebecca Lobo.

For those of you not in the basketball know, Rebecca was a star for UConn (although she did win a gold medal with Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer as coach) and Rebecca is still very close to UConn head coach Geno Auriemma. She said when she was told of the gig, she said, "let me get this straight, you want me to go to a Stanford booster club and speak to them about Nneka?" We all laughed at the irony of it all.

Rebecca Lobo spoke of Nneka being a class act and wonderful young person. Her only one bad decision was in where she went to college…Rebecca said to Geno, “there’s two more of them ya know,” referring to Nneka’s younger sisters still at home. And Geno said, “there’s two more of them?” We could just imagine that in our heads, him saying that. Rebecca said, “yes, so you better get on that.” Geno said, “I think that door is closed.”

WNBA Prez Laurel Ritchie
Okay, first of all, every time I think of Laurel Ritchie my head wants to say Lionel Ritchie so I was cracking myself up when she was speaking. She was very accommodating and a good speaker and had a good sense of humor about herself. I can see why she was picked, even though she NEVER saw a WNBA game or even played the sport, which she was the first to admit. C got to ask her nosy question, which was you have this great resource in NBA TV and why aren’t more WNBA games on it. She basically said I’m working on it. But that didn’t answer my question. Yes, she better be working on it, she’s the WNBA president after all, but I asked wanted to know is it the NBA forces that be that keep the WNBA off the airways? Do they consider it an inferior product to put on their channel? Do they think they will lose ratings putting on WNBA games versus the what they currently have? Inquiring minds want to know.

Lionel Ritchie, I mean Laurel, also said she thought Nneka was just wonderful and special but found herself wanting to pull her aside during a game when she was guarding Tina Thompson. She was thinking, Nneka, don’t you know who that is? That is Tina Thompson, one of the founding members of the WNBA. She should be treated like a treasured (and fragile) commodity. But there was Nneka playing her as hard as can be. It was a cute story that got chuckles from the audience. However the story turned dangerously prophetic.

The Game
As we were making our way to our seats, there’s Nneka’s face up on the Jumbo-tron, plus pictures when she was 2 and 7. She is doing a public service announcement for the Girl Scouts (a little foreshadowing by Orlando, so we were not surprised). Nneka on the Jumbo-tron said she was once a girl scout and how it helped her stay on track. We gave it thumbs up and hope she will be able to do more.

The game started and we waved our yellow “We love Nneka” signs printed by the Fast Break Club. You could tell Nneka was feeling us as she was “up” for this game. And we mean hyped up. Her exuberance was getting in the way of her playing in a controlled manner. She got a charging call on offense trying to dribble through the opposing players. She jumped high for a block but was faked out and got burned. She hustled so hard on defense. She went to the ground several times. She drove to the basket but was pushed under and tried hard to reach around and shoot only to have the ball hit the bottom of the backboard. She was also knocked to the ground on that play with no foul call.

We wondered if she felt the pressure to make her points to get her Nike bonus at the end of the year. We sure did knowing that just sitting in the stands. She did get a double double for the game, as did all the starting Sparks, so everyone could relax.

It was interesting to see her trying so hard. Those elongated steps to the basket, jumping high in the air for rebounds. Back in her college days, when she did that, it meant she was taking over the Pac 10/12 game and was getting ready to score a plethora of points. But here in the WNBA where everyone is a superstar in their own right, it didn’t work. She was out rebounded, she was blocked, foiled or stymied on her drives to the basket. She couldn’t take over the game at will, but she never, ever gave up. She worked hard on every play and that is the sign of a champion (Nneka would say after the game about her WNBA opposition, that maybe not everyone is fast, but everyone is talented).

Remember when Laurel Ritchie told the story that Nneka needs to treat founding veteran Tina Thompson as a rare and fragile commodity? Nneka was trying so hard in this game and would hit the deck on several lose balls. One lose ball Nneka dove headfirst and her head hit Tina Thompson (yes, the fragile founding member) on her knee and ankle and Tina bent awkwardly back in pain. Nneka disengaged her self from Tina and Tina was screaming in obvious agony. Laurel Ritchie must have been cringing in her luxury seat. Tina was helped up but did not put any weight on he injured leg. We thought for sure ACL, but found out the next morning knee sprain, but Tina did not travel back with the team to Seattle.

We also met up with Sue Favor who writes for her blog Hoopism and Basketball Ways, as well as for Hoopfeed. She covers the Sparks and gets to sit on press row. C and R were jealous until we remembered you can’t get free t-shirts while on press row. Here is her article about us Nneka supporters.

So instead C and R sat behind three adorable young boys who were cheering on the Sparks. Seattle scored a basket, probably getting by Nneka because C said “darn it” (yes she did, she is very mindful of little kids and their ears) and one of the little boys turned and said, it’s okay, we’re still winning.” Then for the rest of the game, he announced the deficit. When it got to 24 points more for the Sparks over the Seattle Storm, even jaded C and R were impressed. The boys cheered every Sparks’ basket and especially cheered for Nneka. We asked Dad if they were big fans and came to all the games because they were so knowledgeable and so into it. He said no, this was their first WNBA game ever. He was supposed to take his 3 nieces but they couldn’t make it so he brought the boys. They really had a great time and goes to show you the WNBA is not just for women spectators. They even got caught up in catching a t-shirt just like C and R and we showed them how to stand on the chair arms to elevate their position. Then C fell over a row trying so hard to catch a t-shirt thrown by none-other-than Nneka Ogwumike after the game. Oh yeah, Sparks won 83-59.

Big shout out to the Staples center for having the best popcorn, forger hot dog or soft pretzel. The popcorn was salty, crunchy, slightly buttery but not too oily. You didn’t feel like wiping your hand after every handful. Kudos.

After the Game
Nneka came up to our private suite in her uniform, muscles rippling and looking incredible fit and athletic. She said hi to everyone and someone asked if she heard us cheering and saw all the signs and she said absolutely, which surprised me, she seemed so focused on the game. Then she laughed her wonderfully warm, infectious laugh and you just instantly fall in love with her. That laugh makes you feel young again. That laugh says she is your best friend.

Clarification on classes
Nneka said the WNBA will pay for grad school! They will give $5000 a year to anyone who wants to go back to school. Plus she has the free post graduate scholarship awarded to her by Stanford. As we mentioned, she is trying to work out with Stanford to do some work online while playing in Poland to get her MBA. So in addition to learning her team’s new system, make her numbers and win rookie of the year, she is studying to take the GMAT (graduate Business school test) in July, so that must be coming up soon. This young woman doesn’t fool around nor waste her time playing video games like other young people.

What was it like playing against your old Stanford teammates, she was asked? She said it WAS weird. She said so many times he wanted to high five Jayne Appel or Jeanette Pohlen as they ran down the court because she was so used to being aware and rooting for them. At one point she was guarding Kayla Pedersen who plays for the Tulsa Shock and she got knocked down and Kayla said, “Nneka are you okay?” with genuine concern and reached down and helped her up. Opposing players don’t usually do that. She also said the scouting report was easy on Kayla because she played against her for 3 years.

That brought up a series of questions about preparation for opponents, comparing the pros to collage. We were surprised by Nneka’s answer saying wins and losses meant more in college, that more seemed to be at stake. Not that they didn’t take it seriously in the pros, mind you. She also said Tara VanDerveer prepared her well for the pros. She went on to say with Tara, it was about the system and finding the best shot. Here in LA, her coach says if you are open, shoot. So she feels like she has more license to be creative and shoot, and was told,  “do what you do best.” Coach Ross gives everyone free reign to do what they do best and find a way to score. Interesting, since we heard from Sue Favor who writes for Hoopfeed among other blogs as we mentioned, that when the Sparks get behind they play selfishly instead of team ball and fall apart. Maybe some more discipline ala Tara VanDerveer would be beneficial. Both systems seem to have their pros and cons.

Then Nneka signed autographs for everyone and had to go “take an ice bath.” Sounds like she ices her whole body. The next day was a new opponent, The Atlanta Dream, and the Fast Break Club members were going to do it again, have speakers, see the game and have Nneka talk, but C and R had to get home to the kiddies and kitties.

Even though we went away prize-less, dare we say it, the trip was priceless. We even got in two rounds of golf, one in Santa Maria and one in Pismo Beach, and got to see a wonderful young lady do what she does best. Dazzle with that smile. What a great weekend.

Follow C and R's other wild weekends on Facebook and Twitter, too!

---

Stanford UConn Gone All Wrong

What a frustrating game. Frustrating for Stanford, frustration with officials and frustration for C and R who couldn’t WATCH the game. Frustration for C’s spell checker that hates those fragmented and run on sentences. Let’s recap our experience and the game, if you are not too bummed out already.

• First, C sets DVD to record ESPNU. Then drives to work.
• R calls and says we don’t get ESPNU on our crappy cable plan.
• C says she wouldn’t be able to set the DVR to record if we don’t get the channel, because a day without C and R arguing is a day without sunshine, which it was this morning.
• R says well, she just set her DVR to record even though she doesn’t get that channel, so there goes that logic. Sometimes C and R can be really dumb about technology.
• C changes five lanes to avoid the 22 Eastridge bus, the same one that takes you to Stanford.
• R says she is still coming over tonight to eat all of C’s homemade chili, even though they can’t get the game
• C stews all day at work, then gets stuck a half hour later than planned, getting in car at 5:30 PM, game started 4:30 or something.
• C calls R on hands free device to avoid ticket and be safe.
• R reports Stanford losing at the half 32-26.
• C stuck in traffic, R following Gametracker. Frustrating all around.
• R then says why don’t you turn on your car radio as you can pick up the Stanford station?
• For living in high tech Silicon Valley, sometimes C can be so really dumb about any technology.
• C turns on radio just in time to hear Stanford scores 4 straight points to start the half. Then the foul calls come. The KSZU boys were pretty cute with their Stanford loyalty and lack of objectivity, so we were not sure if the fouls were truly earned or not.
• C pulls into driveway and runs inside during another questionable foul call on Stanford and turns off KSZU on car radio and turns on live streaming of KSZU online. Sometimes C can be pretty smart about technology.  

Still, we can’t believe a game between the then current number 2 and 3 teams was not “National TV,” as promised. ESPNU is a niche channel, not on basic cable, and is one that you have to pay extra for. Bummer. We deserve better. The “we” being all of women’s basketball fandom.

Things we learned from listening:

• Stanford couldn’t shoot the three.
• Yet we controlled the inside.
• Stanford had too many turnovers (16).
• Stanford had the turnovers in the face of pressure, a very bad sign.
• Nneka Ogwumike would score 22 points in 23 minutes, but they had no answer for UConn freshmen Kaleena Mosqueda-Lewis, who is eerily Maya-Moore like, and scored 25.
• Others need to step up and help Nneka score. Sister Chiney was cold with only 7 points on 3-12 shooting, and only hitting 1 of 3 free throws.
• Two starters were so ice cold they got big doughnuts for points, Taylor Greenfield and Lindy La Rocque going scoreless.
• Both teams either nervous, not used to big games, or played tough defense as Chiney Ogwumike would score the first points of the game for either team, a foul shot with 3 minutes and 18 seconds gone.
• Foul calls perplexing
• Refs called phantom fouls, at one point Stanford boys said UConn player swings an elbow, Nneka gets the foul. Nneka was limited to 23 minutes and you can’t score from the bench.
• Stanford Women's Basketball Head Coach Tara VanDerveer trusts Nneka so much she not only lets her stay in when she fouls (take note, Chiney) but lets her play with 4 fouls, as she did for the last 8 minutes.
• A Stanford freshman did stand out, and it wasn’t Amber Orrange, who went scoreless, it was Jasmine Camp, who scored 14.
• It was not a blow out and Stanford didn’t get out-muscled, rebounds 46 for UConn to 45 for Stanford, and although the final score was 68-58, Stanford had the lead three separate times and tied the game 9 separate times.

Things we learned from Twitter:

• Freshmen Alex Green ruptured her Achilles tendon in practice and did not make the trip. Bad news for the youngster coming off ACL surgery.
• Former Stanford guard Ros-Gold Onwude gave her final thoughts “It’s early. More important who learns the most from this and improves the most come March.”
• Amen

Follow C and R on Facebook and Twitter, too!

---

.

Maya Moore Hecka Smart

Boy that Maya Moore sure is smart. Much as we hate to admit it, C and R have always (begrudgingly) admired the former UConn women’s basketball star when she gave interviews. She seems very bright and articulate. We mean, she was thinking to apply for a prestigious Rhodes Scholarship, for goodness sakes!

So it should come as no surprise the WNBA rookie got tapped to write an article for the Huffington Post. In the words of the article, “Moore shared her thoughts with The Huffington Post on unions, fair pay in athletics and what is soon-to-be the ‘Maya’ brand.” Very good reading, makes you believe male basketball players are entitled to and worth all their millions. Too bad some women only make, in Maya’s words, “$36,570.” Fair pay indeed.

And, speaking of the “Maya Brand,” the-just-a-month-out-of college-young-twenty-one-year-old just signed with Jordan Brand, a division of Nike Inc. Jordan. As in Michael Jordan. Now she can clearly say she is on Team Jordan. Now that’s smart.

Maya also wore number 23 in college and identified with Michael Jordan and relishes the chance to be mentored by him, although she didn’t say a mentorship of basketball skills or of his endorsement skills. Can’t go wrong with either one. Terms were not disclosed yet the Hartford Curant reports, “There may even be a sneaker made with her name on it.”  C and R hope she got Michael Jordan Money to augment her low WNBA rookie salary.

Curious, the headlines announcing this endorsement deal state: “1st female basketball player to join Jordan’s sportswear brand.” Not to rain on Maya Moore’s parade, but Zachary Rymer of the Bleacher Report asked the 64 million penny question, “why did it take this long for the Jordan Brand to align itself with a female basketball player?”

See Maya Moore talk about her first day of WNBA practice with the Minnesota Lynx (With our girl Candice Wiggins). Is she wearing number 23 for the Lynx?

Sports Illustrated Covered

Superfan TG writes in to help with the Sports Illustrated Cover Conundrum. He also probably bought a copy of the mag cuz he could tell a lot more than C and R. He writes:

In addition to the women players you correctly identified, I have the following:

1. Skylar Diggins - Notre Dame (in the upper right, just below the funny orange mascot)
2. Brittney Thomas - Michigan State (just above the "d" in Illustrated)
3. Jasmine Thomas - Duke (just to the left of Kemba Walker's arm)
4. Felicia Chester - DePaul (at the bottom, right in front of John Wooden)

I am pretty sure those four plus Adams, Griner, Simmons, Nneka, and Harris makes everybody! And oh, that is indeed Maya Moore just on top of the "e" in Illustrated. That means we have players from each of the 1 and 2 seeds, plus DePaul and Michigan State - 10 in all.

Also, I've been a big fan of Barack Obama from the start. Agree with him or not, I think he has handled tremendous adversity with both intelligence and grace. However, he picked Baylor over Stanford in the national semifinals - I'm voting Republican!

TG

Tournament Time

C and R are getting geared up for the first round of the Women’s NCAA Basketball tournament being held at Stanford on March 19th. The Stanford Women’s Basketball Team plays UC Davis at 3:30 PM Pacific time, so don’t go by the Eastern time and miss the game.

Last year, the NCAA had a different set of rules than Maples and did not let in any outside food or water. C remembers the rows of reusable water bottles lined up against the wall just outside the entrance that the owners brought and did not want to abandon. So if you are planning on bringing food or water, be forewarned.

In other news, our Number One Fan (N1F) sent us a link to an article written by her sister for “Sports Illustrated”. It is a story about our sisters. Well, Stanford’s sisters, the Ogwumike’s, and it includes correct pronunciations for everybody. And it is really good, although C and R are biased and very interested in the subject matter. It has been a joy to watch their exuberance of playing basketball and playing together. Anyone watching them for all of five minutes can clearly tell they have special bond. Check out the article.

Also check out the cover of Sports Illustrated March Madness issue.
It features a collage of the men’s college basketball players, which is to be expected, and a few college women’s players, one of who is our very own Nneka Nneka. SI has different players on the regional issues, and on some of them, Nneka is covered by the shoe of the featured men’s player. Sigh.

C and R were also able to identify:
Baylor’s Britney Griner
Texas A & M’s Danielle Adams
Tennessee’s Meighan Simmons
Xavier’s Amber Harris (we think)
Two different women in blue uniforms, (we think one might be from Duke)
 UConn Women’s basketball Head Coach Geno Auriemma
Maybe a women’s player in green?
(C and R did not notice Maya Moore, although our screen resolution is bad and we are too cheap to actually buy the cover. Feel free to correct of if we are wrong on any of the women’s players, or you know the names of the ones we don’t).

So even with the mystery player in green, that makes nine women’s players. And yet we did see five cheerleaders and nine mascots, added together they make more than the women we saw. Could we get an inside cover of a collage of just the women players? Could we get an "amen?"

Oh, another article about Stanford just popped up over at Sports Illustrated. Well, just popped into our radar. This is written by Ann Killion, who used to be “local” and wrote for the San Jose paper. Talks about the upcoming games.

Don’t forget to fill out your women's bracket before the games start.

Watching Games

Thanks to all who wrote in about how to find certain Stanford Women’s Basketball games that people missed seeing or want to savor over and over again (UConn!).

Here is what we can share. If you want to see the UConn game online, go to ESPN3. Warning, this site was extremely slow, so proceed with extreme patience, and make sure you have all your other programs closed because it crashed my computer, or else the little gerbils that run on their treadmill to power my CPU got tired.

I bombed out three times until I got all the info, listed here:
go to ESPN3
click “all leagues” and set to women's basketball
click “replay” tab
click "all" instead of 7 days
scroll down to Dec 30-whoop there it is!

As for the UCLA PAC-10 tournament game, still no luck, some suggested the All Access site, but heard it was not on it

On a side note, I learned all about the magical world of DVR burning. I had no idea you could do that! It sounds waaay beyond C and R’s scope and power.

Oh, I did have a lovely chat with Stanford’s official video intern and asked her how Stanford gets all their film on opposing teams, because, you know, Tara VanDerveer is such a mastermind at analyzing the other teams. How does she see them all, enquiring minds want to know. Here is what the video intern said:

We get film on other schools in a variety of ways. The Pac-10 teams are required by the conference to upload their games to a conference server. Each school has access to and can download films from all of the other schools.

For non-conference games, there are online film exchange services that teams subscribe to. Stanford subscribes to a main one and utilizes this service to send and receive film on non-conference opponents. We still have to request games from other schools (either done directly through the opponent for a "direct" exchange or through the opponent's previous opponents), but exchanging online is a much cheaper, quicker, and easier process than sending films through the mail.

On another side note, we are partnering again with Women Talk Sports to have a bracket challenge. Last year they had prizes and everything. R won a sports bra and C won a digital sports watch (high quality). Okay, R really won both prizes but she gave me the watch. Will give details soon, hopefully tomorrow. I think they are going to use the ESPN site.

See, C and R told ya Stanford had the toughest road to the Final Four

Pulling Rank

So when C and R saw Baylor lost, to unranked Texas Tech, we thought the new women’s basketball rankings this week would be UConn, Baylor, Stanford, especially after all those PAC-10 games where Stanford started out so slowly, they would be lucky to hold on to number three. Lo and behold, the rankings dropped Baylor to number three. Both polls have UConn number one, Stanford number two, and Baylor number three. Yippee. We're number two! And we mean that in the best possible way! Maybe it is a good thing those PAC-10 games weren’t televised. Oh yeah, Tennessee is a distant fourth, hee hee.

Stanford Beats USC, Nneka Ogwumike Sprains Ankle

So, okay, it’s not that C and R are cheap, per se, when it comes to shelling out the $14.95 a month for the CBS web package to watch their beloved Stanford Women’s Basketball Team, its just that it is so confusing to get the right screen to even figure out if the Stanford-USC game will be shown on the internet site and if it’s worth it to buy the package. (Okay, so maybe we are cheap). Was it on the website? Because we sure could not make heads or tails of the stupid Gametracker. Well, that also might be because we were trying to watch “Jeopardy” at the same time because now that the machine that beat all humans is gone it’s teen tournament time and with the questions scaled down we actually have a shot at getting a question or two right (Hmm, distracted much?).

Anyhoo, what we learned from chess pieces. Kayla Pedersen had a heck of a game (scored 17 points on 7-9 shooting) and Jeanette Pohlen (and everyone else) were told to make some threes after last games low three point shooting ratio. Jeanette was 5-9 from downtown and had 19 points for the game. It looked like Chiney Ogwumike missed some easy shots and had a lot of turnovers, especially in the second half, yet ended up with 13 points, but is hard to tell what is going on. Tinkle had four fouls in four seconds in the second half.

What we did not learn from Gametracker. Nneka Ogwumike’s sprained ankle. We guess Gametracker doesn’t have little red chess pieces to fall to the ground and clutch their ankle. Nneka sprained her right ankle early in the second half and left the game. That’s going to have repercussions against Sunday’s UCLA game. We also did not learn that Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer was whistled for a technical foul. (It’s okay, Jacki Gemelos missed the two free throws). Guess Gametracker doesn’t have a little red icon to yell at officials or throw a shoe or whatever happened. Anybody know what happened? Was it when Tinkle got four fouls in four seconds? R does not even remember a time Tara got a technical foul.

It appears Stanford have lost their intensity and lost their edge. It can be expected a little when we had focused and prepared for the UConn game in late December. The same thing happened last year after Stanford’s “mini” NCAA tournament run before the start of the PAC-10 season. They focused on that, and after surviving it, intensity and urgency dropped. A clear pattern has emerged against this second round of PAC-10 foes. The foes come out swinging, trying to slow things down, and we respond to plodding play with plodding play of our own and go into the locker room close (This time it Stanford was only up by two, 38-36). Then Tara VanDerveer yells/inspires/gives them good feedback/suggestions/points out their flaws and they respond and open the second half with a XX point run. (This time it was a 12-2 run). Then we hold them off and win by 12-18 or so points. This time the final score against USC was 78-64.

And….  and word is out we don’t like it when the other teams get physical. And why should Stanford like it, they play such pure basketball, using their smarts more than their brawn. Witness Washington, who knew they couldn’t rebound with Stanford, so just had every player hold the arm of a Stanford player. It worked for a half, the score was close, and when the refs finally woke up and threw out 4 players with 5 fouls each, Stanford finally got back to Stanford basketball.

Two quotes that support our rant:
“USC came out, and it looked like they wanted to slow the tempo a little bit," VanDerveer said. "They were more physical this time around."

We knew it was going to be tougher the second time around," Pedersen said. "Everybody scouts everybody, and everybody talks to everybody."

Okay, this last quote from Kayla actually helps to make more sense as to why the PAC-10 teams are having more success the second time around.

Sister Sister
Oh, C and R didn’t realize that USC has sisters, too, like our beloved Nneka and Chiney. They have a Briana Gilbreath and a Stefanie Gilbreath. And like our sisters, who often are high scorers for the team, or at least score nearly identical points. Briana Gilbreath scored 17 points, and Stefanie Gilbreath added 16 in this game. Briana Gilbreath scored 11 of them in the first half and was responsible for keeping the score close, or at least that’s what we gleaned from Gametracker. Stanford then shut her down for the second half with one jumper and four foul shots.

Well, the UCLA game is supposed to be televised on Fox Sports Network. It will be refreshing to see the team for real and not read the play-by-play.

How Did Duke Get to Be Number 3?

Hey, ESPN2 advertised a great women’s basketball game for Monday night preim time, number two UConn vs. number three Duke, both teams ranked higher than Stanford, even though Stanford beat one of them, go figure, Duke is the last undefeated team in the country, 20-0, and has the current “Streak”, Stanford beat UConn to end the streak….. So C and R tape it and settle in to watch, women’s basketball, 2 vs 3, a chance to root against UConn again (What’s that old saying, I root for Stanford and any team playing UConn…). Problem is, someone forgot to tell Duke to show up.

UConn jumps out to a 13-0 score before Duke even scored a point 5 minutes into the contest. Duke missed its first 12 shots, and then didn’t score again until they made one free throw by Karima Christmas (jiminy Christmas!). When it got to be 23-3 with about 9 minutes left, it was embarrassing for women’s basketball! Want more? Duke missed their first 20 shots and were 1 for 10 from three point land. When it got to be 40-9, the UConn students chanted, “overrated” at the Duke bench (See, other fans can be as witty as the Stanford band!). The only drama was could UConn hold Duke to fewer than 12 points in the half to set a Duke record in futility. Duke clawed back and got to 15, darn it, their lowest half of the season, and went into the locker room down 41-15, shooting 15% from the floor, and we can’t get Stanford on TV!?

And where was Duke’s D? How do you lose Maya Moore? They let her score at will, running the baseline and posting up, fast breaking, hitting threes. Maya would finish with 29. Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer would never allow that, losing track of Moore. Or allow UConn to score so many points in transition. Or allow the kinds of shot selections Duke took that were way beyond the arc, hurried and just plain ugly. I mean C and R have never seen so many airballs in a game. R said she felt sorry for Duke, but also it looked like they did not do their preparation for this game, like a Tara VanDerveer does. How did Duke get to be number three in the country ahead of Stanford? You know we are biased and all, but Stanford would run circles around this Duke team we saw tonight.

We must admit the reffing was terrible, even worse than the PAC-10, so much contact left uncalled, but it looked like UConn was fouled the most and should have gotten to the line more.

Duke would come out in the second with a little more hustle and got it within 18-20 points, but than Maya Moore took over, hitting threes, quick-releasing her pretty jump shot and getting 29 points before letting what few bench players they have get some playing time (It was Maya’s 134th game in double figures and it tied Courtney Paris’ record). Even Tiffany Hayes got 20 points on a bum ankle, twisted early in the second half. UConn got the lead up to 36 points and coasted to an 87-51 victory.

Must admit the one time Maya took a breather before the end UConn looked unsure and lost without her. A telling quote Maya’s teammate Kelly Faris reported from SI:

"When you have an athlete like Maya, the second she steps off the floor, you are kind of waiting for her to come back in," said Faris. "It's fun being on the floor with her. I can speak for everybody that when she's on the floor, she kind of relaxes us all."

It was fun to hear ESPN2 analyst Kara Lawson’s comments. She was “speechless and perplexed” when the score was, what 40-9 or so, and couldn’t believe “Duke didn’t compete on prime time TV”. Called Duke “a colossal no show”… if only we could get her to watch a Stanford game.

PAC-10 POW and Mail Call

Congratulations to Stanford Women’s Basketball player Nneka Ogwumike for being the PAC-10 Player of the Week (POW) for the week of January 17^th. She helped Stanford take down the Washington Schools and averaged 18 points per game. And sorry we missed Jeanette’s PAC-10 POW honor January 3^rd. (She helped take down UConn that week with a 31 point outpouring in said game).

Mail Call
This just in, C and R have a scouting report for UCLA from superfan TG. He reports:
“Watched UCLA dismember Oregon Saturday on Fox Sports. Very surprised at their offensive discipline to go with their tenacious defense. Last year they were a lot more chaotic and seemed to score mostly on turnovers and offensive put-backs.  Saturday they were patient in the half court, used the extra pass to find the open player, and knocked down a high percentage of mid-range shots.  Very impressive - we will have a tough with them if we give up 23 offensive boards...”

Gulp. Hope Stanford isn’t taking this game lightly.

TH writes in, and no is not UConn’s Tiffany Hayes in disguise writing to C and R, TH asks why Stanford Women’s Basketball is not on TV! Well, how much time you got, Big T? She also asked if the UCLA game was being filmed. A short answer is yes, for the jumbotron and for Tara to study the film afterward, and also I think college basketball service either buys the film or shoots their own and then sells it to any interested party or they have a deal with colleges to provide game film on other teams or something like that, C and R might have it wrong, but the film is not for general consumption. So the bigger question remains why number four Stanford who is playing number eight UCLA at home in an important PAC-10 game is not on any TV channel? (Although you can pay $14.95 a month for the website “ALL Access and see some games).

The long answer is the networks think there is not a big enough following for much of women’s basketball, and certainly not for a West Coast team. The few women’s basketball games the networks deem “Acceptable” are back East and have “name brand recognition, such as UConn, Tennessee, any team with Michigan or North Carolina in their title, any SEC team or any team East of the Mississippi in general. (Okay, at first I threw those last two in as a joke, before we actually DID check to see what’s on TV, and here’s what we found).

C and R checked ESPN3, which is the website name for ESPN and has some coverage broadcast on the web. There IS a women’s basketball game televised the day of Stanford – UCLA. Wanna know who it is? Georgia vs Alabama. Two SEC teams! And Alabama isn’t in the top 25, although Georgia squeaks by in one poll at number 23 and doesn’t appear in the top 25 of the coaches poll.…

So wait, according to Women’s Basketball Online, here is what is being televised on the major networks, not just ESPN. (Comments in parenthesis belongs to C and R, and we didn’t even peek when we said what teams have name brand recognition).
THURSDAY, JANUARY 20^th, 2011
Michigan State at Indiana..........5:30..........Big Ten Network (See, Michigan!)
VCU at Old Dominion..........6:00..........WSKY/Comcast SportsNet MA+ (Two teams East of the Mississippi!)
Tennessee at South Carolina..........6:00..........Fox Sports Net (SEC!!)
Ole Miss at LSU..........7:00..........Cox Sports (SEC again, and one school has Mississippi in the title)
Wisconsin at Minnesota..........7:30..........Big Ten Network (wait, are they east or west of the mighty Mississippi? Ulp, one is east and one is west, so at least they both touch the Mississippi)
Georgia at Alabama..........8:00..........CSS (See, SEC and not ranked and the only game on the internet site as we noted).

What can you do about it? Well, surprisingly, you can do something, and that is to contact ESPN and let them know your thoughts. Let them know you support women’s basketball in general and Stanford Women’ Basketball in particular. ESPN columnist Mechelle Voepel says they listen to the feedback and adjust accordingly and the emails really help. So get writing, Stanford Women’s Basketball fans!

Stanford Really Beats up on Washington State

Streak, what streak? Didn’t Stanford end “The Streak” by defeating UConn earlier this season? Well, yes, but Stanford has other streaks to contend with, such as their home winning streak, which C and R believe to be 54 and will be tested by UCLA on Thursday, and the fact Washington State has never beaten them, home or away, for a streak of 51 games. The last game, played Sunday, had the Stanford Women’s Basketball team beating Washington State 94-50, not that we saw any of it because the number four team in the country doesn’t get any air time, go figure. In this contest, Stanford used their tremendous size advantage and out-rebounded them 49-38 and outscored them 48-16 in the paint while holding Washington State to 25% shooting.

Nneka Ogwumike got 20 points and once again 5 Stanford players scored in double figures. Even scarier, sister Chiney Ogwumike scored 14 points and didn’t miss from the floor, going 5 for 5. Even scarier still, big sis Nneka thinks she’s gotten better from the start of the season. The SF Chronicle quotes, "Not everyone gets to play with their sister," Nneka said. "Just playing with her is fun because I have watched her grow. From the first game to now, she is so much better."

Not to put a damper on this party, but what’s up with Kayla Pedersen? She was 0 for 3 from the floor; two of those misses from three-point land. Has she even gone a game where she did not score a point from the floor? She did get herself to the line (good) where she was 4-7 (bad). Using our high powers of calculations, that is shooting 57.14285 % from the charity stripe. (Wonder if Tara makes them run laps the next day in practice for their misses like C’s old high school basketball coach?) We know Stanford depends on Kayla’s intangibles, and we certainly are not advocating lessening her playing time, but if you do go to the line, you should shoot better than 60%. Jeanette Pohlen, Toni Kokenis, Sarah Boothe, and Joslyn Tinkle all went 2-2 for 100% accuracy from the free throw line. Chiney was 4-6 from the line, but that makes for a 66.66% accuracy rate.

Let’s hope Kayla snaps out of it for the UCLA game.

Basketball Things of Note

Coupla basketball things happened this weekend we wanted to note, sorry it took C and R awhile to get around to it, it was mostly because C was sore for two days after going to a friend’s birthday party at the Sky High Trampoline place (Ever play dodge ball on a trampoline? It’s harder than it sounds).

So thing number one, Notre Dame almost, almost beat UConn! The score was 79-76. Ever since that Stanford loss (hee hee), UConn has lost that air of invincibility and teams now believe they can beat UConn. Last year, UConn had so many weapons that could score that most teams went in mentally with a defeatist attitude and the game was decided before it was played. Now teams are requesting the Stanford-UConn tape and going over it with a fine tooth comb.

Thing number two is sadder. Diana Taurasi’s second sample was tested and confirmed to have the banned stimulant modafinil.

ESPN’s Mechelle Voepelgives a good analysis of how these things work:
-Deny taking the drug
-Wait for the B sample to be tested
-If second sample comes back positive, claim the lab is bad
-Then the Athlete denies taking anything on purpose
-Then a hearing and a penalty

However, if Taurasi is banned for more than 6 months, then she may not attend the 2012 Olympics. Bummer.

Getting back to the lab being “bad”, Taurasi and her lawyer do have a case. According to Mechelle, the "Turkish lab that tested Taurasi's samples was suspended by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) for a two-month period in 2009 before being accredited again." And ESPN also reports two of Taurasi's teammates on her Turkish team Fenerbahce "have resisted doping tests in Turkey because they also do not trust the lab that tests the samples. Australian player Penny Taylor and Czech teammate Hana Horakova provided samples only after the Turkish federation agreed to send them to Germany for testing at a lab in Cologne."

Diana Taurasi’s contract has now been voided by her Turkish team.

I don't think the girl has gone more than two days without playing basketball since grade school. The irony is she was complaining just last year that she has been playing year around in the WNBA, then overseas where she gets more money and Olympic qualifying games, and that she was tired might need time off… hecka a way to do it.

Who's Number One?

The Women’s Basketball Rankings came out for this week and frankly, C and R are surprised. One, the powers that be (TPB) dropped UConn to number two after their loss to Stanford. Everyone (well, all our friends) thought TPB would still keep UConn number one, and are still arguably the number one team in basketball and the one to beat in the  NCAA tournament. So who is number one, you ask? Baylor!
Baylor over UConn? Wait, didn’t UConn beat Baylor? C and R don’t understand that one. Duke is number three, and everyone is going to be looking at the match up of UConn and Duke at the end of January. Number four on both the AP Top 25 and the ESPN Coaches poll is Stanford. Actually, both polls agreed on numbers 1-4 and differ with Tennessee being number five on AP and Texas A and M five and Tennessee’s sixth on the coaches poll. So wait, didn’t Tennessee beat Stanford? C has to give a special shout out to R because she predicted Stanford would be 3 or 4 but above Tennessee and C was all, no, Tennessee beat Stanford, Stanford can’t be placed above Tennessee! But R had teh faith. Well, it’s good to know that TPB are looking at how the teams are playing that week and not the strict record.

TH writes in to ask how we think Stanford would match up with Baylor as they might meet in the NCAA tourney. We think you have to beat Baylor with lots and lots of threes and getting Baylor’s Brittney Griner in foul trouble. She can’t hurt you from the bench! Stanford could easily follow UConn’s game plan from last year’s NCAA tourney win over Baylor, which involved having their center, Tina Charles, drive inside and up and in against Brittney so she would collide with Brittney in the air and although BG might get the block, she would get the foul. Plus I think Maya Moore made was dead-on from outside. We think Kayla Pedersen could be the Stanford player to try and get Brittney in the air and foul with her body. Stanford also has a good supporting cast and if hot can hit outside, too, as well as provide stifling defense. Lastly, if Jeanette Pohlen is still red hot and firing up threes and driving in to the lane with Brittney on the bench, we think Stanford could pull it out.

First Stanford has to get past the Arizona schools this weekend.

Cal Q and A, Part I

Happy New Year to you (And it is indeed a happy one, as we are still basking in the glow of Stanford beating UConn). The folks over at California Golden Blogs sent us some Stanford Women’s basketball questions in honor of Stanford traveling to Cal to start PAC-10 play. Here are their questions and our long and rambling answers. At the end are our questions back to them, which we will post in part II.

1. Jeanette Pohen has always been a good player, but after averaging about 10 points per game over the last two years, she's suddenly averaging over 15 per game and shooting around 45% from 3. Is this just an isolated hot streak, or has her game taken a big step forward?

That is a good question. A great question. My what a handsome question… Any questions? Next question.
No, we were modeling a cartoon TV show’s smarmy politician to avoid answering that question because… we don’t know either. After the UConn game, you can say the new and improved Jeanette Pohlen is here to stay, with her career 31 points and her determined game face. She wants a championship, and has improved her game. But can she sustain it? Only time will tell. However, stats don’t lie (although you CAN manipulate the heck out of them) and she is averaging 17 points a game, which does show some consistency. C and R hope if it is a hot streak., it lasts until the championship game.

2. Chiney Ogwumike: talk about her strengths and weaknesses 11 games into her career.

C and R, in particular C, had such high, high hopes riding on Chiney. She thought for sure she would lead the world in scoring by now! In retrospect, perhaps they were unrealistic. Her sister did not have a break out year until her sophomore year, and Chiney is about where Nneka was her freshmen year. It is a big adjustment to the college game. We saw her play in the SF summer league before she got any Tara tutelage, and she was still playing as a high school player, the best athlete on the floor which could let her gamble on defense and usually recover quickly. In man-to-man coverage in the games we saw, she often left her man and went for the steal. She would often miss, probably a new experience, and the other players with college experience found her wide-open man. We thought that was a weakness and coach Tara VanDerveer would “beat it out of her”. Lo and behold, to our surprise, Tara took Chiney’s weakness and turned it into a strength and unveiled a new 1-3-1 defense, with Chiney on the point. Her job was to run around like crazy chasing the ball and use her long arms and leaping ability and go for a steal. If she missed, then there were 4 Stanford veterans behind her to make sure it did not result in a basket. Did we mention we think Tara is a genius? Weaknesses, how many games has Chiney fouled out of? UConn was no exception. She has to corral that instinct to reach out and touch someone. We think her biggest contribution to a disciplined Stanford team though, is her ability to create her own shot. Once Tara gave her sister Nneka the green light her sophomore year, even moving out established senior post Jayne Appel to give her room to create, she flourished. We believe next year Tara will do the same for Chiney and she will be incredible on offense.

PS sometimes big sis Nneka looks for Chiney and forces the ball to her inside where it is stolen, just trying to be all nice and sisterly and everything.

3. A 20 point loss to DePaul was shocking to see, particularly that Stanford allowed DePaul to go for 91 points. But they bounced back by routing Xavier. Was DePaul a fluke? How much did missing Kayla Pedersen impact things?

Geez, you ask good questions! If you strictly compare the DePaul game to Xavier and UConn, you can easily vote fluke. But in context, having one player go down, in this case Kayla Pedersen being out of the DePaul game and not 100% for Tennessee, Stafnord is just not the same team emotionally. She is their security blanket because she can rebound on both ends of the floor, make a big defensive stop, create a shot or handle the ball. Last year when teams pressed us because our guards were suspect on ball handling and were running for their lives in the back court, if they got a pass into Kayla’s hands, no matter where Stanford was on the court, you could see them visibly relax. Oh good, Kayla has the ball, we’re okay. That is a huge dependency to take away. And we didn’t count on the team feeling the same way about Jeanette this year. When she fouled out of the Tennessee game early in overtime, the team just deflated. So we rely on one or two people, much like UConn relies on Maya Moore. If you can stop or limit a team, any team’s “security” you have a shot in beating them (Witness the UConn victory).

4. How has Stanford been coping with the losses of Jayne Appel and Rosalyn Gold-Onwude, particularly from a defensive perspective?

Well, we were going to say it’s hard to replace PAC-10 defender of the year in losing Ros Gold-Onwude, but after the Uconn game, our defense is juuuuuuust fine. What that says is Tara has great defensive schemes, teaches the fundamentals well, and can tailor a game plan to any individual team like no body’s business. And smaller Nneka was on tall tall Xavier’s post players, and gave up about 3-6 inches, yet her quickness allowed her to play deny defense and her leaping ability took away the back door pass. Tinkle (Jayne Appel’s doppelganger) also looked really good in her defense at the UConn game.

5. Predictions for Sunday?

Oh, let’s not spoil our friendship with a little thing like picking sides, now shall we?
However, a different question would be who will win the rebounding battle? We are picking the Stanford Trees.

C and R’s Questions for California Golden Blogs

1. How much does this team miss Alexis Gray Lawson? Who has stepped up to fill her scoring shoes?

2. How do the incoming freshmen look? And why did Joanne Boyle only recruit guards?

3. Cal beat Illinois for their first road win. Why is it hard for this team to win on the road?

4. Compare and contrast centers DeNesha Stallworth and Talia Caldwell. Which one will give Stanford fits more?

5 One of Stanford’s new interns this year is Cal’s Lauren Greif, who was a senior on the basketball team last year.
Do you think:
A: She gave up all of Cal’s secrets to Tara VanDerveer and crew freely and easily?
B: She gave up all of Cal’s secrets to Tara VanDerveer and crew only after being tortured by being shown those Stanford Women’s Basketball videos wherein they had supernatural powers of no use on continuous loop?
C: She gave up all of Cal’s secrets to Tara VanDerveer and crew but made them all up. (And for their out of bounds play, they like to inbound it off the backside of the opposing player… and oh, in man to man coverage, they plan to have all five players guard Lindy, even if she is sitting on the bench, because, you know, she can really bomb some threes!)

6. Predictions for the amount of available parking spots in Berkeley on Sunday?

Ding Dong, the Streak is Dead!

The first, the last, and UConn was everything in between. C and R are of course talking about the amazing UConn Huskies women's basketball streak of consecutive wins and Stanford’s small part in it. Stanford was the last team to beat them in March 2008, and the first team to beat them since they got the all-time men’s or women’s streak record of 89, stopping them at 90.

This win was so great; let’s savor it minute by minute, shall we?

40 minutes before the game, tons of scalpers on the sidewalks next to parking lots, which themselves are choked with cars. Tickets like the seats R has are going for $125 a pop!

35 minutes before the game, C and R get in Maples early to watch the teams warm-up, but only UConn is out there. Where is Stanford?

30 minutes before game, the countdown clock stops. This game is being televised after a men’s college game. Are they waiting for men’s’ basketball to be over? Stanford waits to come out to warm up, too.

15 minutes before the game, a friend walks up to Stanford box office and gets 3 general admission seats at face value. Say what, Stanford? You advertised the game was sold out and many of our friends who did not have tickets (And yes, you who did not heed our warnings know who you are) friends without tickets stayed away and yet they could have gotten in? Why didn’t you advertise, “Limited seats left?” You might have gotten even more fans here. Official attendance is 7329. Why is it when Tennessee women’s basketball has a sellout, it is 14,136?

10 minutes before game, both teams are now out and warming up. UConn is intense in warm ups, and to our untrained eye, Stanford looks half hearted, kinda going through the motions. UConn has purpose and drive on their lay ups to the basket, Stanford, well, not so much.

5 minutes before game, time for the National Anthem. Maya Moore tells a teammate, “The flag is this way.”

3 minutes before the game, C and R see former Stanford players Jayne Appel, Candice Wiggins, Ros Gold Onwude and… JJ HONES? Wow, she is the guard who got kicked off the team at the end of last year with one year of eligibility left for drinking and driving… a golf cart (Lord, what a thing to live down) and would be starting this game if not for that. It would be hard to show up back at the farm, yet here she is which says a lot about her character, wanting to support her friends and Stanford. Let’s hope she is not bitter.

Pregame introductions

Maya Moore gets a healthy round of applause. Geno gets booed. C and R hate when anyone boos players or coaches, we just feel it is bad sportsmanship. Anyone who is out there playing or coaching is dedicated and putting forth a high effort, and let’s face it you have to respect the streak of 90 straight winning games, nearly 2 and a half years worth of not losing.

Game time-tip off, Stanford’s Nneka Ogwumike loses the tip, not a good sign.

18:42 minutes left in the first half, Jeanette Pohlen makes a three. (C leans to R and says, look, were winning! Little did she know Stanford would not give up the lead for the entire game!)

18:29 minutes left in the first half, Kayla Pedersen gets a defensive rebound. She would be tough on the boards all night. In fact Stanford would go on win the rebounding battle 43-36.

18:02 minutes left in the first half, UConn makes their first basket, a two pointer

(C: look, were still winning!)

15:59 minutes left in the first half, Jeanette Pohlen makes another of her five threes and Stanford is up 6-2.

14:08 minutes left in the first half, Lindy La Rocque hits the first of her two three-point shots, glad to see running, gunning Lindy shooting. And she has a great, great defensive game. Was on Maya Moore for part of the night, was very determined and focused.

14:00 minutes left in the first half, the Jumbotron shows the Quattro of friends (Jayne, Ros, JJ and Candice), for the first of umpteen million times.

13:31 minutes left in the first half, Jeanette Pohlen post up over a smaller guard and makes a lay up, first practiced two days ago against Xavier, and finds success again.

13:31 and 12:27 minutes left in the first half, Stanford goes up by 13 points!! Thirteen points! The largest lead of the night, but still, 13 points!

Oops, wait we did it again at 4:21, too.

10:36 minutes left in the first half, or thereabouts, National Player of the Year Maya Moore shoots an air ball. The crowd chants the “Air-ball” refrain. Look, not that we are making fun of Maya Moore, it’s just that Maya Moore has the best pull up jumper in the country and has been so outstanding and so consistent during the two and half year streak, we are sure that was very uncharacteristic of her, and hopefully can be attributed to Stanford’s tough defense on her.

3:16 minutes left in the first half, Maya Moore makes her first basket, a three. Her first basket of the night with almost 17 minutes gone by in the game. That’s got to be some kinda record. Stanford’s defense is great. Chiney Ogumike is doing most of the defending of Maya Moore now, except when she and then Nneka get two fouls and both go to the bench in the closing few minutes of the half. Now we do not do so well defending Maya and hence the 3-point shot. Maya Moore hits another one at 1:52, but Stanford holds her to just 6 first points half. Also must be some kinda record.

Stanford fouls with 32 seconds minutes left in the first half and with one second left in the first half. Yes one second, UConn threw a half court pass and Lindy undercut Kelly Faris. She should have let her catch and shoot, odds are she wouldn’t have made it anyway.

0 seconds minutes left in the first half, and Stanford leads 34-30.

Halftime, as C races to the concession stand and gets two hotdogs, R gets stopped by the floor crew letting UConn pass to the locker room. R looks right at Geno and says, “You’re awesome!” He looks right at her and says “Thanks.” He then spies one of the half time performers; a monk in a karate suit and lunges low in a karate stance to challenge him two feet in front of R. R is too late to get the photo!

C and R meet with super fan TG and give him his “Fear the Trees” shirt, a prize for knowing who the other coaches were in the 800 career-wins club. C shows her “Hecka Necka” shirt to the cameras but is sure they didn’t show it.

20 minutes left in the second half, C and R just get back to their seats.

17:56 minutes left in the second half and Jeanette scores the first Stanford basket of the second half, what else, a three! Stanford goes back up by seven.

17:11 minutes left in the second half, UConn scores their first points of the second half, also a three. The last time Stanford beat UConn, it’s not that Stanford stopped them, it’s just that Stanford (And Candice Wiggins) outscored them. Let’s hope this game Stanford just stops them, because this year, sometimes Stanford is not good at scoring.

13:22 minutes left in the second half a three by Jeanette Pohlen….lead is nine!

13:21 minutes left in the second half, Jumbotron shows a live action shot of Jayne, Ros, JJ and Candice Wiggins…

10:52 minutes left in the second half, Maya Moore makes her first basket of the second half, (got to be some kinda record), what did she make? What else, a three, she would have no lay ups, a huge defensive statistic. But wait, her three makes it a four-point game. Stanford needs a basket and cannot let UConn back into this game!

10:44 minutes left in the second half, Kayla makes a lay up, thank you very much Ms. Reliable. (Old Faithful?)

9:12 minutes left in the second half, a friend texts R and tells her she thought she saw C and R on TV!

8:05 minutes left in the second half, jumper by Moore.

7:26 minutes left in the second half, three pointer by Moore. Oh no, is this the start of an UConn come back? Little did anyone know, this would be the last points for Maya Moore all night.

7:05 minutes left in the second half, no, no comeback, a lay up for Joslyn Tinkle, who also is having the game of her young life. She played great defense, also asked to guard Moore several times and did a great job. C and R hearTinkle bells in the audience, even though we haven’t promoted it as much this year. Thanks, Stanford fans! R also starts to say, “we’re going to win, I can feel it!” C has a sour pit in her stomach. She can’t handle the stress (You can’t handle the truth!)

6:44 minutes left in the second half, missed three-pointer by Moore. R pounds C’s knee.

Kelly Faris for UConn makes 2 three-pointers at 5:59 and 4:49 to cut the lead to six. Yikes.

3:35 minutes left in the second half, Maya More is being guarded by Tinkle, who gets screened and hands her off to Lindy, who gets screened, hands her off to Kayla who defends her tough and although Moore gets a three point shot off it misses badly.

Tinkle to Lindy to Kayla

Tinker to Evers to Chance

(go ahead and look that one up, especially the sad poem part about breaking opposing fans hearts! C’s head is full of useless trivia like that, just swimming around in her head, waiting to surface at parties to annoy people and mostly beat R at Jeopardy).

2:19 minutes left in the second half, two UConn free throws narrow the lead to six points again, and C is worried, worried, worried. Little did she know this would be the last time UConn would score on the Maples floor that night!

1:42 Chiney would foul Maya Moore and also foul out of the game. Maya misses the front end of a one and one. Again, uncharacteristic of her.

1:37 minutes left in the second half, timeout with Stanford still leading by six and R all smiling and happy and pessimistic C still cannot let herself believe lest she jinx it for Stanford and it is the longest 1:37 minutes of C and R’s life!

1:20 minutes left in the second half, another timeout. Time seems to be agonizingly suspended.

1:14 minutes left in the second half, Nneka would score again to end up with 12 points and have 6 sky-high rebounds.

53 seconds left in the second half, Reliable, Old Faithful Kayla misses the front end of a one and one! And we were just saying about Maya Moore… (To be fair, Kayla got knocked to the floor and possibly hit her head and got her wrist banged so much she grimaced in pain for the final 23 seconds.) Kayla would finish with just 8 points but 11 timely rebounds.

But wait, Tinkle got the rebound and was fouled. They have another chance to pad the six point lead.

51 seconds left in the second half, Tinkle would miss the front end of a one and one… C is about to have a heart attack.

42 seconds left in the second half, 34 seconds left in the second half, 17 seconds left in the second half, Jeanette is fouled, and she would sink all six shots! She would finish the game with a career high 31 points!

4 seconds left in the second half, UConn’s Kelly Faris shoots a three pointer and misses and Jeanette Pohlen grabbes the rebound.

1 second left in the second half, Jeanette Pohlen throws the ball in the air.

0 seconds left in the second half, Stanford wins 71-59, a margin of 12 points! R predicted they would win by 10, so C is taking R to the track next weekend.

2 seconds after the game ended, Candice Wiggins, Stanford great, who is NOT on the team currently stormed the floor and hugged Pohlen, Pohlen still had her game face on and hurriedly pulled away, probably wondering if it was a violation of game rules or something for her to even be on the court and wanted to do nothing, nothing to jeopardize this incredible win. Jeanette wanted this one. She wanted this so badly and has stepped up her play. Kara Lawson on ESPN said Jeanette Pohlen was the best guard on the floor tonight. Maya Moore was held to 14, 10 points below her average, and credit Stanford for being in her face and not letting her have good looks all night. Credit Stanford Head Coach Tara Vanderveer for having the exactly right game plan and Stanford for executing it.

5 minutes after the game, the team came back out, lead by a leaping Nneka.. Tara spoke to the crowd, thanking them for helping to make Maples a good environment to win (and keep their home streak alive at 52) and asked that everyone come back for another game. Then she thanked The UConn team and coach and staff.

R said she feels bad for Geno. Heck, C figures, Geno must feel relieved. He got the streak in the record books, and now the pressure and the daily questions will go away and he can focus on basketball, league play and the March tournament. Hey, same for Stanford.

15 minutes after the game at the post game conference on national TV Tara said, “We didn’t win a national championship.” We have a lot of basketball left.

Yes, good to keep it in perspective, Tara, but it sure makes those losses to DePaul and Tennessee easier to swallow, and gives much hope for the future.

UConn - Stanford Game Sold Out!

Thursday’s Stanford Women’s Basketball team’s game vs. number 1 in the country UConn is sold out. However, if you did not secure your ticket like C and R (well, R, she has the season’s tickets), we have seen scalpers outside of Maples during big games like this, so maybe you will get lucky. And, if you can’t go to the game, this one is being televised on ESPN 2.

So, the national papers were kinda hum ho about Stanford’s win against Xavier. It seemed to C and R they already discounted that game and were looking ahead to the UConn game. The game where Stanford played their best game all year. The game where number 9 Stanford knocked off number 4 Xavier. A game where number 9 beat number 4 by 37 points. You can’t discount a game like that.

C and R were encouraged by that win because it means at least we have a chance with UConn with the team that showed up Tuesday. And remember, this is essentially the same team that held UConn to 12 first half points in the championship game. (The two Stanford players missing from that game are defense specialist Ros Gold-Onwude, and center Jayne Apple, who went scoreless for the first time in her college career). Annnnnd, Stanford’s Jeannette Pohlen and Kayla Pedersen were the last two players to beat UConn in 2008!

Travel safely to the game, come early, and expect long lines at the concession stands. Plan on eating out for dinner.