Cardinal will open at home vs. Davis
Stanford earns No. 2 seed; No. 8 Cal will play North Carolina
Stanford’s women get to start the NCAA Tournament in the friendly confines of Maples Pavilion on Saturday as a reward for a strong season that included a Pac-12 tournament title last week.
Cal opens March Madness with a tough subregional in Waco, Texas, after finishing tied for sixth in the league.
The bracket accidentally released prematurely Monday didn’t offer any surprises for the Bay Area schools heading into the postseason with hopes of surpassing expectations after surviving one of the country’s most competitive conferences.
Second-seeded Stanford (28-4) is matched against No. 15 UC Davis in a 3 p.m. tipoff whereas the eighth-seeded Golden Bears play No. 9 North Carolina (18-14) at 12:30 p.m. Saturday.
Stanford took the early release of the bracket well before
the ESPN selection show in stride — particularly given the fact the players are dealing with winter quarter finals this week.
“The freshmen don’t even understand the excitement they are missing out on,” coach Tara VanDerveer said.
The real excitement will begin this weekend when the Cardinal try to go deep in the Chicago Region where rival Notre Dame received top seeding. The Stanford-Davis winner will advance to face either No. 7 Brigham Young (25-6) or No. 10 Auburn (22-9) in Monday’s second round at a time to be determined.
Stanford has advanced to the tournament for the 32nd consecutive year and secured a strong seeding after stunning Oregon in the Pac-12 tournament championship. Tennessee is the only school with a longer active streak after qualifying for its 38th consecutive bid Monday.
It doesn’t get old for VanDerveeer, 65, in her 33rd season at Stanford.
“You want it for your players,” she said. “There is no ho-humming it.”
Cal (19-12) advanced to the tournament for the third consecutive year with the winner of its game advancing to face either No. 1-seeded Baylor (31-1) or No. 16 Abilene Christian (23-9) in the second round Monday.
The Bears are led by Kristine Anigwe, an espnW All-American and
the country’s only player — male or female — with a double-double in every game this season. She averages 22.9 points and 16.3 rebounds.
Coach Lindsay Gottlieb found out her team was in the Greensboro Region on the way to practice Monday afternoon. She called the players together to tell them they were headed to Texas.
“Better to hear it from me than on their phone,” the coach told reporters. “It allowed us to make practice a little bit more focused and directed. It probably raised the level of intensity in practice.”
Gottlieb said the Bears won’t be overwhelmed by potentially two difficult opponents, though the coach isn’t looking beyond Carolina.
“I know that they are incredibly dangerous,” she said of the Tar Heels.
While Cal can see a matchup against Baylor on the horizon, “is there more of a storied name than North Carolina?” Gottlieb asked reporters. “Our players
are focused on the first game.”
Like VanDerveer, the Cal coach said the competitive Pac-12 schedule has her team ready for its seventh tournament appearance in eight years.
Louisville earned a No. 1 seeding in the Albany Region with Connecticut No. 2. Mississippi State got the top billing in the Portland Region with Oregon No. 2. The Final Four is scheduled April 5-7 in Tampa, Florida.
Davis (25-6), the Big West champion, is making its second appearance in the Division I tournament. In 2011, it fell to Stanford 86-59 in the opening round.
Davis has a 16-game win streak under coach Jennifer Gross, whose team lost to Stanford 71-43 in the season opener Nov. 7. Cardinal senior star Alanna Smith praised the Aggies despite the lopsided margin: “They run the offense better than we did,” she said.
Davis dropped its first three games of the season and four of the first six before regrouping.
The team is led by 6-foot-4 redshirt senior Morgan Bertsch of Santa Rosa, who has averaged 26.1 points a game in a four-year career. VanDerveer called her ‘a next-level player.”
She is not happy about facing Gross, a friend who has helped VanDerveer and Stanford implement its Princeton offense.
But it’s also tournament time.
“Every woman for themselves,” VanDerveer said.