For Cardinal women’s basketball team, season shutdown bitter pill to swallow
The Stanford women’s basketball players sat in a circle on the day the NCAA announced the unprecedented cancelation of March Madness.
They laughed and cried and spent a final hour together Thursday as a team that had hopes of reaching the Final Four, April 3-5 in New Orleans.
Instead, they disbanded. The players dispersed across the country to prepare to take winter quarter exams at home because the campus is all but closed in the wake of the coronavirus threat that has led to the widespread disruption of American life.
Through it all, Hall of Fame coach Tara VanDerveer used the moment to impart one of her many lessons the players have learned under her tutelage.
“You have to enjoy every day you’re
with your team, every day in practice,” VanDerveer said she told the team. “You can’t look forward to the NCAA Tournament because look, it was taken away.”
Stanford (27-6) had qualified for every NCAA Tournament since 1987. It had expected to play host to the first- and second-round games next week at Maples Pavilion.
VanDerveer, 66, was en route to catching the legendary Pat Summitt as the all-time winningest women’s basketball coach. Summitt ended her career at Tennessee with 1,098 victories, currently four ahead of VanDerveer and seven more than Connecticut’s Geno Auriemma. It would have taken VanDerveer a trip to the Final Four to match Summitt.
But VanDerveer said Thursday that she expected NCAA officials to cancel the men’s and women’s tournaments after the NBA suspended its season this week.
“But you’re still disappointed,” she said. “You know, not disappointed in the decision but disappointed in the fact that you just don’t get to play. I’m especially just disappointed for our seniors who had such a fantastic year.”
Two of the four seniors, DiJonai Carrington and Anna Wilson, want to return next season as medical redshirts. There is only scholarship space available for one of them. Wilson applied for the redshirt year before Carrington was lost for the season in November when aggravating a previous knee injury.
The other two seniors, starting forward Nadia Fingall and reserve guard Mikaela Brewer, will graduate.
The seventh-ranked Cardinal’s final game was tough — an 89-56 dismantling by No. 2 Oregon on Sunday in the Pac-12 Tournament finale. But VanDerveer said the returning players will use the lopsided defeat as motivation next season when Stanford should be considered one of the country’s best teams.
The roster will be bolstered by two five-star recruits, 6-foot-4 Cameron Brink and 5-7 point guard Jana Van Gytenbeek. Stanford had four freshmen on this season’s roster, including Archbishop Mitty’s Haley Jones, who suffered a knee injury at the end of January and did not return.
The Cardinal coaching staff did not send the players home with training instructions because VanDerveer said everyone needed a break “just to process what has happened.”
But she added that the team’s performance coach Ali Kirshner would contact each one within the next two weeks.
“They’re going to want to be working out and doing things that help them get better,” VanDerveer said. “But we’ve got to be ready for anything. You’ve got to be ready for quarantine or whatever happens.”