Cardinal’s post-VanDerveer era off to rough start
The new era of Stanford women’s basketball is off to an ominous start.
Over the weekend, Kiki Iriafen, the star who was supposed to provide continuity and hope for the program, announced she is transferring to USC for her final year of eligibility. She will be paired with dazzling JuJu Watkins, giving the Trojans the most dynamic duo in college basketball and cementing USC as the new West Coast powerhouse.
The move wasn’t unexpected. Tara Van Derveer knew it was a possibility, even before the Hall of Fame coach announced her retirement at Stanford earlier this month. Iriafen, thanks to taking summer school during her three years at Stanford, will earn her degree in June. She’s a Southern California native, having grown up in Los Angeles and attended high school at Harvard-Westlake.
In this new collegiate world, Iriafen saw the chance to make lots and lots of money in her final season. And she also identified, in USC, a team that has a great shot at winning a national title. Those are two things she couldn’t get at Stanford.
It isn’t known how much Iriafen will be earning through name-image-likeness (NIL) deals at USC, but the thought this spring was that she could make about $750,000. Would Stanford’s collective have been willing to find that kind of money for her? That’s unclear. But Stanford has been very slow to adapt to the new world order. Even with the Lifetime Cardinal collective trying to make inroads, the feeling within the Stanford women’s basketball program is that the priority is, as usual, football and men’s basketball.
VanDerveer’s successor Kate Paye is a highly regarded coach and the right person for the job. But there’s no denying that she has a very tough road ahead.
Other universities have been quicker than Stanford to embrace the new rules and accom
panying chaos. And many more programs are jumping on the women's basketball bandwagon, hoping to capitalize on the unprecedented growth and momentum in the sport. A player like Iriafen suddenly has so many options.
VanDerveer had grown increasingly discouraged by the fact that there are no rules governing collectives — nothing like the tampering rules in pro sports or the NCAA recruiting restrictions. Collectives associated with other schools can contact athletes at any time, in season or not, offering lucrative NIL contracts and encouraging them to enter the transfer portal.
Iriafen was at VanDerveer's retirement news conference, asking her coach a question from the audience and posing for pictures with the legend. Iriafen clearly loved Stanford and her team. But when I asked her that day if she was coming back, she hesitated before saying, “I don't know.” A few days later she was in the transfer portal, with the notification “do not contact,” indicating that she already knew exactly where she was going and had a deal in place.
The news about Iriafen wasn't the only blow to the Cardinal over the weekend. Princeton guard Kaitlyn Chen announced that she was transferring to UConn. The former Ivy League Player of the Year was a portal player the Cardinal had targeted: Ivy League schools don't allow graduate students to compete in athletics, and Chen had one remaining year of eligibility due to COVID. A native Southern Californian, she seemed like a perfect candidate to enroll in a graduate program at Stanford. Instead she opted for UConn and the chance to pair with Paige Bueckers in the Huskies' backcourt.
Everything about Stanford's situation seems complicated right now.
The Cardinal is about to move to the ACC, an awkward fit for a West Coast team, stripping the program of its natural rivals (save for Cal, which also makes the move) and demanding ridiculous amounts of travel and logistical hurdles. While some East Coast recruits might welcome the move, it could be a huge turnoff for many other athletes. Stanford All-America post player Cameron Brink cited the ACC as a factor in deciding to eschew her final year of eligibility, saying, “As much as I love my coaching staff and my teammates, I don't want to travel across the country.”
The move to the ACC is also fraught with financial peril. Stanford's athletic program has been running at a deficit for years. Out of desperation to find a landing spot, both Stanford and Cal agreed to a deal where they will receive only 30% of the revenues that other ACC member schools receive for the first seven years of the deal before ratcheting up to full shares. But some wonder whether there will even be an ACC as we know it after the 12-year life of the agreement.
Young people choosing schools — or at least their parents and advisers — are well aware of the new financial landscape in college athletics and will factor all that in when making decisions. In addition, the lure of a Stanford degree doesn't carry as much weight for a star player who could make $1 million, or more, playing for an elite-level basketball team and earning a perfectly good degree somewhere else.
And then there's the loss of what was a drawing card for Stanford for decades — the chance to play for one of the greatest women's basketball coaches of all time. To learn from a legend and be part of Tara VanDerveer's legacy.
That era is over. It's a new age for Stanford women's basketball. And it is full of daunting challenges.