The Bay Area is still the epicenter of fun basketball.
The Warriors have taken a couple seasons off after their brilliant fiveyear run, but no problem. The Stanford women have stepped in to fill the joy void.
Sorry, rest of world, the Bay Area is still the epicenter of fun basketball.
Stanford’s run to the NCAA championship, winding up with Sunday’s 5453 win over Arizona, proved it again.
The Cardinal is the best sports team in the Bay Area this season, and the most fun to watch. Not that it’s a vigorous competition, but still.
It would not be fair to compare this Stanford team to the Warriors of their glory run, because the Cardinal are unique and have their own identity. But life isn’t fair, so here we go.
It’s no coincidence that the Cardinal offense looks a lot like the Warriors’ fluid, motion offense. Tara VanDerveer is a thief, as is any great coach. She has watched the Warriors, talked it over with coach Steve Kerr, and has built a similar offense.
Movement and passing leads to easier buckets. The Warriors always dominated the assists stat. VanDerveer’s players share the ball. Sunday Stanford had 15 assists, to Arizona’s 5. On the season, Stanford had 543 assists, their opponents had 296!
I don’t know if Stanford’s Haley Jones has studied how Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson move without the ball, but they would have been impressed with Jones on Sunday, cutting and backdooring and shredding the Arizona defense.
When you have that kind of offense, you don’t have to rely on one star, and Stanford confuses opponents that way. They don’t know who Stanford will go to, because Stanford doesn’t know. Whoever’s open.
Remember Strength in Numbers, Kerr’s coined phrase? How deep are the Cardinal? About 10 deep, which is about three players deeper than Arizona. Stanford survived its Elite Eight game against Louisville only because sub Ashten Prechtel, who sat out the entire first half, dominated in the second half.
The Warriors won with defense. The Cardinal? Oh, lordie, VanDerveer found herself about 12 women willing to get down and dirty on defense.
No Stanford opponent this season shot over 41% from the field; Arizona shot 28.8% Sunday.
Kiana Williams has never met a screen she can’t fight through. And she’s got a Draymond Green takecharge vibe. Before Arizona inbounded on its final possession, down by a point, Williams told teammate Lexie Hull to trap Wildcats scoring ace Aari McDonald, and that forced McDonald into taking a pure desperation heave at the buzzer.
Interior defense? The Warriors, especially James Wiseman, could take a lesson from Stanford. Hands up, don’t leave your feet! Stanford had 196 blocked shots this season, to 84 for their opponents. Cameron Brink, Stanford’s willowy 64 freshman forward, had 88 of them. She had three blocks Sunday, and she’s smart enough to keep those blocks in play, resisting the theatrical swats into the third row.
The late comedian Henny Youngman watched his first ballet and commented, “Why don’t they just get taller girls?” That’s what VanDerveer did. Facing Brink and the 65 Prechtel, opponents couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
And let’s talk about character. The Warriors during their run had something special going on, highcharacter guys who bought into Kerr’s system, which is all about team — offense, defense and off the court.
Probably too much has been made (including by me) of Stanford’s hardships this season in terms of their nine weeks locked out of their own gym. Sure it was tough, but they stayed in nice hotels, and there were 350 million of us in the country who were inconvenienced.
Their twomonth road trip helped them bond, surely, but even before they were forced to hit the road, VanDerveer was telling people, unprompted, that this was a special group of women, one of her favorite groups in her nearhalfcentury of coaching.
That can be just pure luck, getting a group of players willing to buy into the team thing. But there is also an art to developing that spirit. VanDerveer has studied and mastered that art. She drives her players relentlessly, and supports them in public and behind the scenes.
I don’t hear VanDerveer talk as much about joy as Kerr does, but the result is much the same. Stanford plays an exciting kind of basketball: fastpaced, aggressive, nonstatic, and I’m assuming it’s a fun way to play the game.
It sure looks like fun. The Bay Area is in a bit of a slump, sportswise. The Giants, A’s, Warriors and 49ers are all scuffling. Thrills are in short supply.
So thanks, Stanford, for showing the world that the Bay Area still knows how to rock.