Women are giving area NCAA hope
As the hype around the men’s NCAA Tournament starts, and chaos descends locally at Cal, a shout-out to our local women’s hoops.
This is March Madness, when hope and optimism bubble over. In the Bay Area, those hopes — as usual — rest primarily on the shoulders of our women’s teams.
Lindsay Gottlieb’s Cal Bears and Tara VanDerveer’s Stanford Cardinal are heading into the NCAA Tournament. VanDerveeer is coaching in her 29th — yes, you read that right — consecutive NCAA tournament, a run interrupted only by her year away to coach the the 1996 U.S. women’s Olympic team.. Gottlieb is also becoming a March staple, with her Bears
making their fifth appearance in the six years she’s been at Cal.
The women have been consistent, steady programs. Which is more than you can say about their male Pac-12 counterparts.
On Wednesday, Cuonzo Martin resigned at Cal after just three years, one NCAA Tournament game and a massive failure to meet expectations. The Bears were flat-out embarrassed in his final outing Tuesday night in the first round of the NIT.
As the No. 1 seed in the junior tournament, playing at home, the Bears were flat, looked uninspired and lost to Cal State Bakersfield. Martin looked like a man with a foot out the door. Which he was. He will become the head coach at Missouri.
Remember two years ago, when he landed the No. 2 recruiting class in the country? Plenty of us projected deep tournament runs. Never happened. The whole short-lived Martin era was entirely forgettable.
His star recruits? Jaylen Brown was the third pick in the NBA draft last year and is with the playoff-bound Boston Celtics. Ivan Rabb provides a cautionary tale for players who want to bypass the draft in favor of staying in college. Since he was projected as a top-10 pick last year, Rabb’s stock has dropped. He sat out the NIT flop with a foot injury.
While the St. Mary’s men’s team is back in the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 2013, and Randy Bennett always puts a competitive team on the floor, our local Pac-12 men’s teams have given their fans nothing in recent years.
The Stanford men have been in the tournament just once in the past nine seasons. Jerod Haase, who went 14-16 in his first season, is trying to create a winning culture. Cal is starting over, again. Meanwhile, the women’s teams are the picture of stability. Steady and efficient and with established winning cultures.
Both teams play Saturday: the No. 2 seed Cardinal take on New Mexico State in Manhattan, Kan., and the No. 9 seed Bears face LSU in Waco, Texas.
Gottlieb, seven months pregnant and newly engaged, had to wait nervously with her team to get news of its berth. The Bears had a surprisingly strong start to the season, then stumbled. They earned their way into the tournament thanks in large part to the strength of the conference. They are a young team, led by sophomore center Kristine Anigwe, that will benefit from the experience.
And then there’s Stanford. VanDerveer passed the 1,000win mark this season. She’s in the Hall of Fame. She is in her 39th year of coaching.
All of that means that we shouldn’t take her for granted. She speaks longingly of finding time to ski — something basketball coaches basically can’t ever do because of their schedule. She has accomplished everything there is to accomplish in her sport.
Year after year, she has coached her teams — rarely with the top talent in the game — to the tournament. This year, VanDerveer lost one of her top players, Lili Thompson, who quit the team in the offseason and will play at Notre Dame next season. Yet her team did what it so often does, winning the Pac-12 tournament, excelling on the road and entering the tournament with high expectations.
Stanford will need its road experience in the tournament. Because the school is hosting the Pac-12 gymnastics championships at Maples Pavilion, the Cardinal couldn’t host the first two tournament rounds, as it so often does.
That was a scheduling conflict. But for some reason, the tournament committee put Stanford in the Lexington, Ky., bracket. Stockton is hosting a regional and history shows that attendance is greatly helped by having a local — or at least relatively local — draw. Instead, the closest teams Stockton will host could be Oregon State and Arizona State. Not exactly next door.
But wherever Stanford is playing, the team is worth watching. VanDerveer has set the bar at a place only the most elite can clear. We probably take our local legend for granted but we shouldn’t, and all you have to do is look around at our other collegiate programs for proof.
Know that we are witnessing greatness in action. And the very picture of stability.