Stanford seeded No. 1 again
Cardinal set to face Utah Valley in Alamo regional
Stanford earned its 10th No. 1 seeding in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament that will be held entirely in San Antonio beginning Sunday.
The Cardinal (25-2) open the tournament against Utah Valley, which received its first-ever March Madness berth as the 64-team was announced Monday.
The selection committee placed Stanford in the Alamo region with No. 2 Louisville, No. 3 Georgia and No. 4 Arkansas.
The Cardinal earned the No. 1 overall seeding while North Carlina
State, Connecticut and South Carolina were the other top seeds in their respective regions. The tournament is designed with four regions of 16 teams given names of popular San Antonio locales — Alamo, Hemisfair, Mercado and River Walk.
Stanford, which won the Pac-12 regular-season title and the league’s tournament championship, played more than two months on the road because of strict COVID-19 restrictions in Santa Clara County.
Senior guard Kiana Williams said as difficult as it was to be away from campus for so long, it got her teammates ready for the tournament.
After being away for 10 weeks, Williams said, “We can do it for three weeks. In that aspect, we will be the most prepared team.”
Williams, who leads the team in scoring at 14.3 points per game, said the Cardinal endured tough times on the road, including not always wanting to practice.
The guard said the most trying moment came after Stanford lost to UCLA for its second consecutive
defeat of the season.
Williams recounted how the team practiced in a high school gym without lights and a slippery floor.
“How worse can things get?” she recalled thinking. “What else is going to be thrown at us?”
Stanford has won 14 in a row since the defeat, beating UCLA 75-55 on March 7 in the Pac-12 tournament finale.
The balanced Cardinal have one of the deepest teams coach Tara
VanDerveer has seen in the last decade.
Sophomore Haley Jones averaged 13.0 points and 7.7 rebounds and 6-foot-4 Cameron Brink has been a breakout freshman with 10.2 points and 6.8 rebounds per game. The Cardinal has not lost since she joined the starting lineup.
“She definitely has a unique skill set,” VanDerveer said. “Her size, her defense, her hands, her ability to run. It gets our team off to a really good start.”
Not surprisingly, VanDerveer played down the top seeding saying, “What I tell our team is
seeds do not matter. Records are irrelevant. Our focus is on Utah Valley. Having gone through every imaginable thing in this tournament that is what we’re focused on.”
Stanford is one of six Pac-12 teams to make the tournament, joining Arizona, Oregon, Oregon State, UCLA and Washington State.
VanDerveer said having played that many tournament teams in the regular season will help the Cardinal in San Antonio.
But so will the team’s depth. Sophomore post players Ashten Pretchel and Fran Belbi did not get
to play in the tournament last year when the coronavirus pandemic canceled the postseason competition.
VanDerveer said the sophomores’ improvement this season has allowed the Cardinal to play tag-team with its liberal substituting.
“We can just keep running,” VanDerveer said. “We don’t drop way off when one of them comes into the game.”
Williams said she was most excited for the sophomores to experience their first tournament.
“March Madness is the best time of the year,” Williams said.