Model player for Stanford
McPhee gave up modeling for basketball
Sometimes, after sitting out for a long stretch because of injury, athletes will wax poetic about how good time away did for them, commenting on how grateful they were to learn by watching instead of doing. Coaches will gush about how the athlete figured out exactly what her team was missing and brought that when she returned.
But Brittany McPhee is not that athlete, and Tara VanDerveer is not that coach. When McPhee missed nine games in non-conference play earlier this season because of a stress reaction in her right foot, no one was thinking it was good for the Cardinal.
“I think she was frustrated every single day, just like I was,” VanDerveer told USA TODAY.
It’s easy to see why: Without McPhee, a 6-foot senior guard who can score in bunches and loves to attack the basket, Stanford lacks a go-to player. With her, the Cardinal, ranked No. 20 in this week’s USA TODAY coaches poll, are in contention for their 23rd regularseason Pac-12 championship. That would have seemed impossible in midDecember, after the Cardinal dropped a home game to Western Illinois to fall to
6-5.
Coming off VanDerveer’s 12th Final Four appearance last spring, the Cardinal put together a brutal non-conference schedule that included games against preseason top 20 opponents Connecticut, Baylor and Tennessee, plus two matchups with preseason No. 8 Ohio State. And that was before
Pac-12 play, where the Cardinal routinely meet ranked foes. It’s the sixthtoughest schedule in the country, and a chunk of it was played without McPhee.
“I think we would have come along a little quicker with Brit because we needed that go-to person, and not having that really hurt us,” VanDerveer said. “I knew when she came back we’d be a different team.”
No kidding.
After returning in late December against Tennessee, McPhee has been on a tear the last two weeks, averaging 23.5 points and seven rebounds. Her biggest performance came on the road. At Oregon on Feb. 4, she scored a career-high
33 points — 31 in the second half — including Stanford’s final 19 points in a 78- 65 upset over the then-No. 6 Ducks. Two nights prior at Oregon State, McPhee grabbed 12 rebounds and scored 18 in another upset win over the then-No. 16 team in the country.
Those victories put Stanford in the driver’s seat for another regular-season championship — plus the No. 1 seed in the conference tournament — and catapulted the Cardinal back into the Top 25 after six weeks of being unranked.
“As a senior, I have to figure out the best way for our team to win,” McPhee explained to USA TODAY. “In the Oregon State game, I had to get 12 rebounds. In Eugene, we were down at halftime and we had to score. Tara told us scoring was on our shoulders, and that really resonated with me.”
Basketball is in Brittany and twin sister Jordan’s blood. Their mother, Alice, played at Eastern Washington and then professionally in Australia. Their father, Bryce, played at Gonzaga with John Stockton, scoring 1,060 points from 1981-85. Younger brother Jim — Brittany and Jordan’s uncle — followed next, scoring 2,015 points from 1986-90. He is still Gonzaga’s second all-time leading scorer.
Bryce and Alice never pushed basketball on their kids — Brittany’s older brother Bryce played at Western Washington — instead telling them over and over again that they could do whatever made them happy. This applied off the court, too, and came in handy when 16year-old Brittany told her parents she wasn’t interested in a potentially different career path.
In middle school, an agency rep approached Brittany at a mall and asked if she’d ever thought about modeling. Brittany scoffed. She’s a tomboy through and through, joking that she wears dresses less than anyone else on Stanford’s team and cracking that the only way anyone would consider her fashionable now is because “athleisure” wear is a growing trend.
But soon she was doing shoots in New York and Florida and had a spread in Teen Vogue. At 16, she traveled to a competition in Shanghai, where she realized she’d much rather be in a gym than on a magazine cover.
“She made the top three, and the whole time she’s like, ‘I don’t even want to do this,’ ” Bryce recalled laughing. “There were girls there who were crying they were so upset, and she’s like, ‘ Do you want my place? I’m not really into it.’ They wanted to send her all over the world, to Milan and Paris, and she said no.”
That’s just fine with VanDerveer. “One time, (assistant coach) Kate (Paye’s) family did a fundraiser that was a fashion show and Brit was in it, with all the other players,” VanDerveer said. “You could see she was very comfortable on that runway — but she’s pretty comfortable on that court, too.”