Candice Wiggins learned something critical in the NCAA tournament her freshman year. “It’s really a possession game,” the sophomore sharpshooter told reporters shortly before this year’s Sweet Sixteen. “Things come down to the last minute, the last second in every game.”
On March 27, the two-time Pac-10 Player of the Year proved prophetic. For the third year in a row, the Cardinal women’s basketball team (26-8) bowed out one game shy of the Final Four. With 5 seconds remaining, Stanford was trailing Louisiana State by one point when Wiggins, faced with 2005 Naismith College Player of the Year Seimone Augustus, passed the ball out to Krista Rappahahn. The shooting guard sank a 3-pointer, but Wiggins was called for a charge and the basket did not count. The Cardinal lost, 62-59.
Three weeks earlier, in an upset overtime victory, UCLA prevented Stanford from capturing a fourth consecutive Pac-10 title. The Cardinal entered March Madness with a No. 3 seed, then exceeded expectations. The team began the tournament with decisive wins over Southeast Missouri State, 72-45, and Florida State, 88-70. Memories of earlier defeat fueled Wiggins, who contributed 34 points against Florida State. “I don’t know about the rest of my teammates,” she said, “but I was thinking, ‘UCLA, UCLA, UCLA, UCLA.’”
Stanford then faced a true test: Oklahoma and freshman phenom Courtney Paris, the first woman to notch more than 700 points, 500 rebounds and 100 blocks in a season. The Cardinal double-teamed Paris, limiting her to 26 points and 16 rebounds, while junior center Brooke Smith lit up the scoreboard with a career-high 35 points. Stanford won, 88-74. When reporters compared Smith’s performance to that of UCLA’s Bill Walton, who sank 21 of 22 against Memphis in the 1973 NCAA final, she demurred. “I wasn’t that good,” she said. “I missed two.”
Smith—and Stanford’s offense—had been strong all year. Rappahahn drilled 91 3-pointers to break the single-season school record. Wiggins finished the season with 740 points and Smith collected 584. When the team beat USC 73-44 in the Pac-10 semifinals, Women of Troy head coach Mark Trakh was left shaking his head. “We just ran into a buzz saw.”
For most of the season, head coach Tara VanDerveer started two freshmen—point guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude and forward Jillian Harmon—alongside Wiggins, Smith and Rappahahn. All starters except Rappahahn return next year, as do junior center Kristen Newlin (who started 17 games this season), sophomore guard Cissy Pierce and redshirt junior guard Clare Bodensteiner.
Many considered this a rebuilding year, between the top-ranked 2004-05 team that graduated five players, and the 2006-07 team that could be on its way to greatness. In addition to returning four starters, Stanford will welcome a class of four incoming freshmen that is ranked third in the nation.
But Harmon, who contributed eight points and pulled down nine rebounds in her first Elite Eight game, wouldn’t diminish this season’s accomplishments. “In some people’s eyes this was a transition year,” she said minutes after the Louisiana State game ended. “We wanted to prove them wrong.”
