Cardinal from Down Under not sweating underdog role
Alanna Smith averages 13.7 points per game, a seemingly modest average. But if you look at her numbers over the home stretch of Stanford’s season, she stands even taller than her height — which is 6-foot-4 (or 193 centimeters in her home country of Australia).
Her Cardinal will be underdogs when they face topseeded Louisville in the Lexington (Ky.) Regional semifinals Friday night. Lexington is just an 80-minute drive from the Louisville campus, so the crowd will heavily favor the locals.
But Stanford faced a similar situation last year when it faced top-seeded Notre Dame, also in
Lexington. Down 16 points in the third quarter, the Cardinal came back to win 76-75 on Smith’s jumper with 23 seconds left and Erica McCall’s block at the buzzer.
“We didn’t change our attitude even though we were down 16,” Smith said by phone Wednesday on the team’s bus ride to the airport. “I know a lot of teams down 16 points in the third quarter, they’re not feeling ready to come out in the fourth quarter. We felt it was our last opportunity, and we had to give it our all.”
In Melbourne, Australia, her parents — Darren and Simone — set the alarm for 3 a.m. so they could listen to the Notre Dame game on a radio broadcast from the Elite 8. “It was well worth it,” Simone said via email. “We booked flights to Dallas (for the Final Four) immediately after.”
In the last seven games, the junior forward is averaging 18.1 points. In the two NCAA Tournament games, she has scored 20 and 28. A 32 percent shooter from distance this season, she has hit 7 of 13 three-point attempts in the Big Dance.
“This time of year, you have to deliver,” Smith said. “We prepared for this time of year all season. This is my third time doing it. You get a little experience behind you, and when your time comes, you have to step up.
“I don’t think it’s just one person who’s going to be the go-to star. That’s the kind of team we have. We have people who are going to star one night; they’ll play what (head coach Tara VanDerveer) calls ‘a solo.’ And then another time someone else might have a solo.”
The whole team seems to have found its shooting stroke in the tournament. It entered NCAA play with its worst shooting percentages in school history: 41.9 from the field, 30.9 from deep and 63.9 at the foul line. So far in the tournament, the Cardinal are shooting 50.8 percent from the field, 51.3 percent from deep and 65.2 percent at the line.
“We’re not a team to sleep on in terms of shooting,” Smith said. “We’re extremely capable of shooting well, from the threepoint line and from the field.”
Smith said the team’s killer nonconference schedule has paid dividends.
“Playing some of the best teams in the country early on, even though we lost in the first part of the season, it’s going to help us now,” she said. “We know now that we can beat those teams, and we know what we have to do to do that.”
Her goals stretch beyond the Final Four in Columbus, Ohio. She’d love to play for Australia in the World Cup in September.
“After being involved in the Opals (Australia’s national team) program for the last year and a half, that’s definitely an ambition of mine,” she said.
Her mother admits that Alanna’s warm, kind personality “initially did impede her competitiveness on court. Over time this has gradually diminished the further she has gone with the sport and the more her confidence has improved.”
Her father played pro ball in Australia for over a decade. They frequently talk after games, which he and his wife often listen to on Stanford’s online play-by-play. Stanford’s first international recruit and her parents don’t seem to have much trouble overcoming the 18-hour time difference.
A psychology major, Smith plans to follow her mother and older sister, Kalani, into that field after she’s finished with pro basketball.
On the other hand, maybe she could be a professional coffee taster.
“Melbourne is the place to be for world-class coffee,” her mother said, “so when she’s back home she drags me all over Melbourne to cafes that have coffee credibility. I think we squeezed in 37 coffees in her last visit.”