The void is enormous. But so is the potential.
As the women’s basketball team began its season, the absence of Candice Wiggins seemed as intriguing as it was worrisome. Her departure after four years of being all-everything to the Cardinal leaves coach Tara VanDerveer with an assortment of questions about the team’s strengths and weaknesses. But it also puts the full squad’s talent in focus and highlights how good Stanford still may be.
“If this team can improve as much as last year’s team,” says VanDerveer, “it has unlimited potential.”
Last season’s team went 35-4 and finished as the NCAA tournament runner-up, losing the championship game to Tennessee. This season opened with a classic sense of flux. An upset loss on the road to Baylor was followed by resilient performances at home, including an 81-47 rout of highly rated Rutgers. But in the course of thrashing Rutgers, starting point guard JJ Hones severely injured the anterior cruciate ligament in her left knee for the second time in her career and was lost for the season.
The roster’s foundation is a deep pool of returning players, including forward-center Jayne Appel, a 6-foot-4 junior who was a first-team all-Pacific 10 performer last season, and forward Kayla Pedersen, also 6-4 and last year’s Pac-10 freshman of the year. They’ve been joined by two freshmen of particular note: 6-2 forward Nnemkadi (Nneka) Ogwumike, the Texas high school “Miss Basketball” as a junior and senior, and 6-5 forward-center Sarah Boothe, the Illinois high school “Ms. Basketball” as a senior.
VanDerveer expects Ogwumike and Boothe to make big contributions. Perhaps more tellingly, she crisply declares “They’re ready” when asked if they can make those contributions immediately.
The most obvious result is expected to be a marked change in Stanford’s playing style. Wiggins pulled attention to the backcourt because of her superb skills and leadership at guard. But there’s now a thicket of powerful frontcourt talent that will reshape the team’s personality and draw the action closer to the basket.
“Our inside game has gotten a lot stronger,” says VanDerveer. “Whether that will balance out what we lost, I don’t know.”As the season picked up momentum, VanDerveer was waiting to see how two key elements evolved: the ability to handle pressure defense (where Hones had a key role) and the quality of the perimeter shooting. Stanford was flummoxed by the pressure from Tennessee in the NCAA title game, so that tactic is likely to be popular with the Cardinal’s opponents. Let them try, Hones said before she was hurt. Her thinking: “Tennessee is a team like none other.”
With Hones out, Appel, Pedersen, forward Jillian Harmon and guards Rosalyn Gold-Onwude and Jeanette Pohlen comprise the team’s core. The top seven players—counting Ogwumike and Boothe—give Stanford impressive depth, a huge asset over a long schedule that features Pac-10 play from January into early March. Ideally, the season won’t end before the Final Four in St. Louis, April 5-7.
The national press sees Stanford as a surefire powerhouse over the long haul, and the buzz about Ogwumike (oh-GWOOM-i-kay) is that she’s one of those rare players who are good enough to eventually define the team she plays for—Wiggins-like status, basically. But that’s not what she was thinking about when she decided Stanford had the right program for her.
“I wasn’t really thinking about changing it. I was thinking about adding to it,” Ogwumike says.
Practices, says VanDerveer, reflect both a sharp competitive edge and a bond that comes from doing by committee what Wiggins often provided single-handedly. And it all adds up to an especially interesting adventure for VanDerveer, who’s in her 23rd season at Stanford and 30th as a college coach.
“Thirty years, wow,” she exclaims. “I started when I was 15.”
