NO BETTER ENDING
Azzi, just miles from her Tennessee home, led Cardinal to 1990 NCAA crown
The final installment in our series chronicling a March Madness moment for each of our six D-I colleges. This story originally appeared on April 2, 1990.
KNOXVILLE, TENN. >> The celebration began with 0:09 showing on the game clock and Stanford leading by nine points.
Amy Tucker, a Stanford assistant, got up from her seat next to Coach Tara VanDerveer and walked down the bench to where Jennifer Azzi was standing. Tucker arrived with her right arm extended, the palm face up, and Azzi smacked it with such great emotion that you tingled.
“I was just thinking, ‘You couldn’t ask for a better ending than this,’” Tucker said.
Sunday’s 88-81 victory over Auburn was the perfect ending for Stanford and Azzi. Stanford and Azzi, they had become known as one and the same over the four years since Tucker recruited her out of a little Tennessee town not far from here called Oak Ridge.
Azzi brought Stanford to prominence in women’s college basketball, and on Sunday, the Cardinal, with a cast that went far beyond their star senior guard, sent Azzi out in full glory with a national championship in her own backyard. She also took with her the tourna
ment’s most-valuable-player award.
“The MVP really doesn’t matter that much to me. Going home with the trophy, winning it in Knoxville with my parents here and my sister and all the people from Oak Ridge ... it just feels really, really good,” said Azzi, who scored 17 points before fouling out with 1 minute, 28 seconds to play.
Azzi had said it better earlier, in the first few minutes following the final buzzer. VanDerveer had been summoned from the team’s celebration at center court for a postgame TV interview, and as she approached the CBS cameras, Azzi broke from the pack in a sprint and threw herself into the coach’s arms.
Within a minute, the entire team was assembled in front of the CBS cameras, and that spoke volumes about Stanford and Azzi and the 1989-90 Cardinal. They were three and the same on Sunday, for the 33rd time in a season that saw them lose only once — on the road by three points — against seventh-ranked Washington in early February.
This is a team, and it goes far beyond a balanced scoring attack.
In addition to Azzi’s 17 points Sunday, Stanford got 18 from forward Katy Steding, another departing senior, and 16 points and 10 rebounds from junior center Trisha Stevens.
Sonja Henning had 21 points and nine rebounds — four on the offensive end for the smallish point guard — and a bunch of key free throws down the stretch, and all day long she navigated through Auburn’s full-court press and she still couldn’t escape Azzi’s massive shadow. Henning was slighted once again, left off the all-tournament team, and once again she couldn’t have cared less.
She said so after the game, but she didn’t have to. Anyone watching her would have known. Andy Geiger was watching. The Stanford athletic director, here in body and spirit, was standing on the periphery of the celebration, watching the Cardinal take turns cutting down the net.
“Sonja doesn’t get the star billing,” he said, “but she’s the glue. She holds us together. She held us together all year.” Then Geiger went to her, wrapped her up in a bear hug and stepped away with watery eyes.
Henning was smiling, as broadly as anyone. They stopped for a team photo before leaving the floor and Henning was kneeling front and center, holding the championship plaque. To her immediate right was Azzi. Beaming, they each raised an index finger — No. 1 in the country! — and locked them together.
Because this is a team, was a team, in the greatest sense of the word.
VanDerveer recalled a card she received from Steding after two players quit the team on the eve of the season opener. It read: “There are 11 people who still believe we will win a national championship and that you are the best coach.”
Nine days ago, before Stanford took the floor to
play Arkansas for the West Regional title and a trip to the final four, VanDerveer received another note. It was from her star player, Azzi.
“She knows I get a little uptight,” the coach said, “so she’d written this little note and it said, ‘Tara, relax. This one’s for you.’ I saw that and I just thought, ‘Hell, we’re going.’ ”
They went all the way on Sunday. The team that all season long never ranked higher than second or lower than third ended up No. 1. It was perfect. EPILOGUE: Stanford reached the championship game the next two years, winning in 1992.