March 2010 Stanford Women's Basketball Archives

March 15 Stanford vs. UCLA-- PAC-10 Championship Game

We run into some UCLA fans in the bar (hey, it was the only place near the arena open for lunch). They say they heard UCLA’s Jasmine Dixon was hurt. That she got hurt in the semi-final game against USC. C and R look at each other. Maybe they are trying to give us false hope. 

All C and R can say is if she was hurt, we would hate to see her at full strength. The Stanford Women’s Basketball team led the game against UCLA wire to wire, but it was Jasmine Dixon that impressed. She was everywhere on the court. She would drive in to the basket and try to draw a foul and when Stanford would play off her to prevent her drive, she would pull up for a jumper and make it. She also was everywhere on the defensive side of the court. 

The only way we could stop her was when she went to the bench. Luckily for us, she did early and often in the first half. What was UCLA Head and PAC-10 Coach of the Year Nikki Caldwell thinking? 

C and R were sitting with a mixed crowd (meaning we were near Stanford and UCLA fans) and our section had fun theorizing why Dixon was not in more. Was she really injured? Was it her foul trouble? (She would eventually foul out of the game in the second half) Was it to give us a false sense of confidence? 

One of our faithful readers had a great theory that Jasmine was tired from yesterday’s game and they were resting her a lot in the first half so she would still be fresh for a second half charge. Boy, that was a good theory. 

Speaking of the half, we were leading 36-19 after 20 minutes. Can you say “Defensive Battle”? Can you say, "Stanford make your lay-ups for crying out loud?" Good. UCLA kept us on our toes by a half court trap and occasionally a full court press. In breaking the half court trap, as long as we did not panic and remembered we can dribble out of two people guarding us, we did fine.

As for UCLA’s full court press, we could break it but it would take us 15 seconds of the 30-second shot clock. Stanford fans, let’s flash back to 2008’s National Title game when Stanford played against Tennessee (you know, the one that was Candice Wiggins’ last game-- Oh, we just like remembering her!). No, really, we have a point. 

At that time, Nikki Caldwell was an assistant coach for Tennessee. She noticed that the strength of Stanford’s offensive was their passing and going through set “reads”. If you are open, you shoot; otherwise you pass to the next player. Pass to the wing, pass to the three point shooter, pass to the high post, wait for the guard to come around the horn of Africa and hand off, back to teh wing… you get the idea. Stanford would be very patient and disciplined and pass until they wore down the defensive and would find a shooter open and shoot. This would take 20-25 seconds of the 30-second shot clock. If you covered that shooter the next time down, Stanford would have another option waiting. It was hard to defend. 

So Nikki said, “Let’s take away their strength”, which is using the clock. So Tennessee pressed us and harassed us in the backcourt. Even if we broke the press and got the ball across the half court line, we had used 15 seconds of clock. As we went to our passes and “reads,” we would run out of time and would have to take a hurried shot. We looked disjointed on offensive, never found our rhythm and lost the game. 

Well, flash forward to the second half of this game and UCLA comes out in a full court press. We don’t panic as much as we used to and get the ball across half court, right at the 15-second mark. Except this time we have our secret weapon, Nneka Ogwumike. We can just pass it to her down low and she can create and score within 5 seconds. Or else Kayla Pedersen can get the ball and pull up for a three or drive in, all within 5 seconds. Ha, we are not so one-dimensional anymore, are we? 

Oh, with UCLA pressing, Tara decided to insert guard Melanie Murphy into the game for her ball handling skills and she did great, and contributed 10 points. Hopefully her knee is up to the challenge of more minutes. 

So when we saw UCLA open teh second half with the full court press and Jasmine Dixon playing hard, we thought the prophecy that UCLA was saving Dixon to make an energetic charge was going to come to fruition. But we broke it and scored easily. When Dixon got her fourth foul and went to the bench, no one from UCLA really stepped up scoring-wise, and when she fouled out, that’s all she wrote. (Except for us, we keep writing). The outcome was never in doubt and the final score was 70-46. 

One thing we did admire is that UCLA did not give up on their aggressiveness in the closing minutes. They went hard after the Stanford players, and if we got a defensive rebound, they attacked us, a few times slamming down hard on the ball to knock it away. So much so that Stanford Coach Tara Van Derveer said UCLA “took rebounds out of our hands”. She feels we still need some work, to put it mildly. 

Nikki Caldwell said she liked when her team was “aggressive and disruptive”, but they did not keep it up for 40 full minutes. C and R are sure in she will correct that in a year or two. 

We do want to mention that we thought we had better refs for this game at least more fouls were (rightfully) called. UCLA had two players foul out in the second half, and Jayne Appel was in danger with 4 and Nneka had 3. The UCLA players, in their defense, were playing very aggressively when they fouled. 

Now on to the accolades. First of all, we are the first women’s PAC-10 team to go undefeated in PAC-10 play (18-0) and undefeated in the PAC-10 tournament. We were 21-0 during that stretch. Nneka Ogwumike scored 59 total tournament points and was named the tournament MVP. She was the fifth player to be named league MVP and tournament MVP. Kalya Pedersen and Jayne Appel were named to the PAC-10 tournament team. 

Incidentally, Swish Appeal has been reviewing women’s basketball teams in preview of the NCAA tournament. Here is one quote about Stanford’s trio of trees.

“Most schools would kill to have one post player as good as any of Stanford's. The fact that Stanford is sitting on three of them is mind-boggling… In case that wasn't enough, they have the co-Defensive Player of the Year in the Pac-10 in senior guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude.”

She forgot to mention Chiney Ogwumike coming in next year… hee hee. 

Sorry, little bleary-eyed this morning getting back from LA. Busy fixing typos from previous posts done from the back seat of bouncy taxicabs, although we tried to avoid them as much as we could. You know that song “Walking in LA”, with the line “No One Walks in LA”? Well, C and R did walk a lot in LA and risked our lives several times using cross walks. And to get to our hotel, the light for the crosswalk took five minutes. No lie! 

Must admit as we walked around USC’s campus, it was so clean and well manicured. Very impressive. Wonder if any of the teams stayed on campus to save money? The weather was perfect, and if there was smog, we certainly couldn’t see any in our little corner of LA. 

Oh, Women Talk Sports is supposed to be getting a women’s bracket up and I think fans can participate so you can play just like the followers of the men’s brackets and might be possible to win prizes but don’t quote me on any of that. (And who ever does!)

Okay, now I have to go change my many clocks, too.

A quick hello again from LA where we have no idea what time it is! Daylight Savings happened sometime last night and although we remember “Spring Forward, Fall Back”, that means the clocks…..um, we don’t know. All we know is the Stanford Women’s Basketball Team plays in the PAC-10 Tournament Championship Game today at 3 PM. Let’s hope we can figure out what time it is before then. Meanwhile we are going to Fat Burger for breakfast and or lunch.

Stanford plays UCLA today, the best team that has a chance to upset Stanford. Although UCLA played in a spirited semi-final game against USC and won, C and R are hoping they will be emotionally and physically drained.

In other news, we checked up on the news about Cal’s Alexis Gray Lawson. She went down hard on the court in the game against Stanford in their semi final game and was taken off by stretcher. Cal’s coach, Joanne Boyle, visited Gray-Lawson in the hospital after the game and said she was joking, talking and having "normal" conversations with everyone. Good to hear, hope she can go home today.

Hello from LA, CA! C and R here reporting from the Galen Center on USC’s campus, flying in just in time to see the Stanford Women’s Basketball team play Cal (again) in the semi-finals of the PAC-10 tournament. The neat thing about being here (and not watching it on TV) is all the friends we are making!

We want to give a special shout out to D and C, our delightful friends from CAL! Yes, that’s right, they were Cal fans but sat next to us and were a lot of fun. C, the new one, is from Ohio, just like original C, so Original C said we would say hi to them in the blog. Hope they know how to use a computer! (boom-roasted!)

Okay, next order of business, we want to assuage your worries, C and or R were not the fan that was almost kicked out of the game. Repeat, C and R were not kicked out, and no one bothered us about our tinkle bells for Joslyn Tinkle.

So let’s back up a bit. Stanford was beating Cal handily, thanks to Jayne Appel’s appearance and no thanks to the bad refereeing. Two of the refs we recognized from previous Stanford games, and we were not fans of them then. They didn’t make any friends in this game, either. They certainly “Let Them Play” and there was a lot of rough pushing and fouls not called.

Jayne came in around the 14 minute mark of the first half and Stanford just feels better having her there. With her still bum ankle, she looked like she was limping and it affected her ability to jump. When the pushing and non-calls were getting out of hand, we watched Jayne get shoved to the ground out of bounds on a rebound under Cal’s basket, and no call. Coach Tara VanDerveer had seen enough and took her out in the final two minutes of the half to protect her. The score was 29-17 at the time, and we never looked back. We used our tenacious D and a Nneka Ogwumike catch and release shot in the final seconds to take a 35-19 lead into the half.

At the start of the second half, Cal tried a full court press and although it gave us fits at times, we figured it out pretty quickly. And hats off to Tara VanDerveer for not being complacent, as she whipped out a Stanford half court trap we have only seen once this year. It only lasted for a few minutes, though, as Kayla Pedersen got called for a reach in foul going in for a steal and a charging foul after our trap stole it and she was trying to get a fast break off the steal. Enough of that said Tara.

There was a very scary moment right before the 5 minute mark in the second half. Stanford was up 56-32. Michelle Harrison blocked Cal’s Alexis Gray Lawson and she hit the deck. Stanford grabbed the rebound and hustled down the court while Alexis lay motionless on the floor. Play keep continuing and the refs did not stop play for the injured player.

Now, it is unclear to C and R of the refs have discretion to stop play whenever a player goes down or if they have to wait for a dead ball to check on the injured player. Or if they just didn’t know she was laying back there in the back court. So the game continued on for 12 seconds until there was a break in the action and the refs finally called an official time out to check on Alexis.

Sooo, from the fans point of view, the refs were either heartless or clueless.

Soooo, as the medical crew was checking on Alexis and both teams were huddled by their benches and it was very, very quiet in the building, a female fan (not us) yelled, “You refs are stupid!” That’s it, one sentence, no curse words, no badgering. Unfortunately, the lady ref we don’t like heard her and said, “I heard you call me stupid.”

Sooooooo, the ref, let’s call her Melissa, called over security and wanted the fan thrown out. Two big guys went to the section and were unsure what to do, who was it, was it that bad, was it this little old lady, so they just told the section to be quiet. The ref kept wanted someone thrown out and the staff didn’t want to throw anybody out. The fan seemed pretty pacified by this point. (BTW, if you know who that fan is, please email us so we can buy her an adult beverage!)

Sooooooooooo, then, as that drama was going on, the camera crew (remember, the game was actually televised) got a cameraman to bring his camera on the court and got about three feet from where Alexis lay motionless. Fans started yelling to get the camera man out of there. Then many jokes ensued about getting kicked out of the game for yelling and then one person in the crowd said, “Boo to the camera man“, so then the rest of the crowd started to just boo. So the Cal huddle looks at the stands and probably thinks we are booing Alexis on the floor. Finally they get Alexis stabilized on a back board and take her away in a stretcher to the waiting ambulance. The crowd stood, as well as the Stanford bench, as she left.

We found out later she fell on her neck and shoulder and they are going to keep her in the hospital over night for observation but she should be okay. We wish her well.

Stanford would go on to win by 20, 64-44, same margin as last time.

Well, been a long but fun day. C and R signing off. See ya tomorrow from LA.

So the Stanford Women’s Basketball team takes the floor against Arizona for their first PAC-10 tournament game. No Jayne Appel, of course, still bum ankle, so Joslyn Tinkle starts. Then, we lose the jump ball. We NEVER lose the jump ball. So much so that C has a superstition if we lose the jump ball, we will lose the game. Not sure how scientific it is, but C is nervous. 

For the first three minutes or so we offensively try to work it inside to Tinkle standing in Jayne Appel’s spot in the low post, but she is still a freshmen and is not able to drive aggressively to the basket as Jayne does so effortlessly. Tinkle does pass quickly and seems to be on par with Jayne’s court vision and ability to assist. Unfortunately, Stanford is cold, cold, cold and missing everything. Our top scorer, Nneka Ogwumike, is especially missing everything. Is she too tight? 

At the first media time out, they announce they will show senior tributes to the seniors playing in their last games. Stanford goes first and of course they lead off with Jayne, who is not playing this game. She mentioned it was neat to travel to the PAC-10 schools and loved the history of playing on their courts. Then they show Ros Gold-Onwude. RGO was aware how as a student-athlete kids looked up to her and was always amazed little kids wanted her autograph. Well, that was C and R’s little girl’s basketball team most of this year! 

Back to live action, Tinkle sets a nice screen to free Jeanette Pohlen for her second three and we go up 10-5. Now Michelle Harrison comes in for Tinkle and C and R like having the fifth year veteran in there. JJ Hones comes in at 11-minute mark, in what is still a low scoring game. Stanford is up 12-7. Lindy LaRoque gets into the game, too, and C and R are glad to see  Head Coach Tara Van Derveer using her bench to give rest to the veterans and experience to her second string. Lindy gets to experience fouling Arizona, too. Mel Murphy gets in as well and we almost didn’t recognize her, as she does not have her black tights. 

Arizona’s Ify Ibekwe and Nneka are guarding each other, each being the other’s dopple ganger. Then it looks like our Nneka is going top take over the game like she did with Cal but it is their Nneka, Iky Ibekwe, who takes over. 

Then our Nneka says, “Oh not you don’t” and tries to match her baskets. But Kayla Pedersen says, “Don’t forget about me, ladies,” and gets a hot hand. Those three will score most of the points in the first half. 

At the half, Nneka has 15, and their Nneka has 15 points. Kayla has 6 and Jeanette Pohlen says, “Don’t discount the three”, going 4-6 from behind the line and she has 9. So with the score 34-24 at the half, oh, don’t make me do math… Those four players have combined for 45 of the 58 points scored. 

When the second half starts, Nneka gets her second personal foul at the 16:45 mark but credit to Tara for leaving her in the game instead of yanking her out. She knows how important she is to us offensively. Nneka later drains 2 free throws and Nneka is 100% from the free throw line, 7-7 with just under 15 minutes left. The PAC-10 tournament record is 11 made, attempts are 13 and Nicole Powell has the free throw percentage record of 100% (8-8). 

As we are contemplating records, Arizona gets a three and are within 3 with 13:27 left. The score is 43-40. What the heck happened? Must have been losing that jump ball in the beginning of the game. 

OMG then Tara must be nervous because Jayne Appel comes in the game! We have been told all week long she would not play in this game, or practically any game in this tournament, yet one little scare and there she is. Tara needn’t have worried as we drain 2 three-pointers and are back to up by 9. Tara would say later in the post-game press conference that having Jayne relaxed us (and her). No doubt, Jayne is our emotional leader. 

Their Nneka scores a basket around the 6 and a half minute mark and C and R realize it is her first points in the second half. Wow, great D on her, Stanford. She would end up with 18 for the game, after 15 in the first, with no one else from her team getting into double digits. Hard to win if you don’t have a supporting cast. 

Our Nneka is fouled at the 5:02 mark. Oh goodie! With Stanford firmly in control of the score again (58-46), we can concentrate on her record, or attempt of being a perfect 8-8 from the line to tie Nicole Powell’s record. She is now 7-7. She was fouled as she made her basket, so she gets one attempt to tie. She lets go… She misses! Arrgh! 

Jayne looks ragged, not jumping much for rebounds or a lay-up. She would get fouled several times going to the basket. She would score 7 points and comes out after 10 minutes when we have a 13-point lead. She did give us the confidence we needed, though.

Nneka makes two more free throws now that the record is no longer there. She would end up 9-10 on free throws. The tournament record is 11 made. Maybe next game. Nneka did end up with 25 points for the game, than Jeanette with 15 and Kayla with 11. 

Our subs come in and we go on to win 72-52. But the game was closer than it needed to be. Tara said her the post game press conference that we need to play better if we want win in the PAC-10 Championship. She’s not one to sugarcoat things, is she? 

First of all, if you can’t make it down to LA, you can see it LIVE and FREE on the Internet, courtesy of CBS Sports at this link. You can even get the audio. Class act to help generate and keep interest.

It was sad to see so many empty seats on Friday, especially during the Cal vs. Arizona State game (of course, the games did take place during the day, so maybe it would have been that unpopulated if the games where in the Bay Area).

Stanford will be playing Arizona today, which survived a squeaker against Washington State. And why oh why did Arizona’s star, Ify Ibekwe, sit out most of the first half? The team said unspecified punishment. Did she get caught sneaking out after hours? Will she sit during the Stanford Women's Basketball game?

Okay, so remember how C and R reported that Nneka Ogwumike won the PAC-10 Player of the Year Award? And four Stanford starters, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen, and Jeanette Pohlen made the All PAC-10 team and Ros Gold-Onwude made the five-member All-Defensive team? ‘Member? Well, that was the PAC-10 MEDIA awards, as voted on by “Select” members of the media, and no, as far as C and R know, garden-variety bloggers were not invited. So, did that not count as the real thing? We don’t know, but the “Real” PAC-10 Awards were announced today, as voted on by the PAC-10 coaches. Guess what, they are almost identical to the media awards with the notable exception they gave out rookie awards and Joslyn Tinkle got an honorable mention. So then… why have the two? Either have it be all coaches, or have it be coaches and media combined, but don’t have two separate awards that are so very similar. Anyway, that’s C and R’s opinion.

Or, on second thought, why not get the bloggers involved. C and R vote the “Purple and Blue Award” for Jayne’s ankle. Wait, strike that, instead we would hand out an award for “The Most Talked About Ankle in PAC-10 History”, winner, Jayne Appel’s. (As of this press time, she will not play in the early rounds of the PAC-10 tourney). Or “The Team with the Most Player Who Cannot Legally Vote?” I think Cal has a couple of 17 year olds. Oregon wins “Most Shots in Seven Seconds or Under”. And we want to see more of this team and coach, and we would have voted Paul Westhead Coach of the Year for the remarkable turn around he did with that team. We heard the rap on him was that his team did not finish “High” enough in the wins column to get Coach of the Year Honors.

Okay, here are the coaches’ PAC-10 awards:
All PAC-10 team: Nnemkadi Ogwumike, Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen, and Jeanette Pohlen (Ros Gold Onwude received an honorable mention)
All Freshmen Team Honorable mention, Joslyn Tinkle
All Defensive Team: Ros Gold-Onwude (Kayla Pedersen received an honorable mention)

These awards were announced Wednesday. The Pac-10 Player of the Year, Pac-10 Freshman of the Year, Pac-10 Defensive Player of the Year and Pac-10 Coach of the Year as voted on by the head coaches will be announced on Thursday, March 11. (!!!)

So today they announced the PAC-10 Individual Awards:
Stanford's Nneka Ogwumike won the PAC-10 Player of the Year
USC’s Gilbreath and Stanford’s Gold-Onwude named PAC-10 Co-Defensive Player of the year.
UCLA’s Nikki Caldwell voted PAC-10 Coach of the Year

Okay, we don’t get this either. Why announce some of the PAC-10 coaches’ awards and save some for another day? We give up! 

Well, congratulations to Nneka for being PAC-10 player of the year, again, and to Ros Gold Onwude for being co-defender of the year. Next year we will just wait until April to announce awards. 

Oh wait, as long as we are talking about awards, our number one recruit who will play Stanford Women’s basketball next year, Chiney Ogwumike, and Nneka’s sister, also won an award. Chiney Ogwumike was named National Player of the Year. As in the whole darn country. She finished her high school career leading her team to a second Class 5A Basketball Championship in three years. 

Chiney has played in the state tournament all four years she has been at her high school, Cypress Fairbanks in Houston, Texas. In the title game this year she had 31 points, 18 rebounds, seven steals and three blocks. She didn’t have a turnover and dominated the game in every way possible. She was also the tournament’s MVP.

Well, what a week. First of all, the Stanford Women’s Basketball Team is the top seed in this weekend’s PAC-10 tournament (no surprise there). They play the winner of the Arizona-Washington State game on Friday. 

Then the PAC-10 Awards came out. Stanford’s very own Nneka Ogwumike was named the PAC-10 Player of the Year. Congratulations, Nneka, and you deserved it. You took your good game and elevated it (pun intended) to the next level. When you wanted to free lance and get to the basket and score, you could almost at will. And congrats to Head Coach Tara VanDeveer, although she didn’t win the Pac-10 coach of the year award (UCLA’s Nikki Caldwell did, a Pat Summit product), Tara recognized what she needed to do to her program to let Nneka be successful (meaning not boxing her in to a rigid offensive set) and even sacrificed Jayne Appel’s role slightly to accommodate what Nneka does best. Who says old dogs can’t learn new tricks?

There were several PAC-10 teams. The a 15-member All PAC-10 team featured four Stanford starters, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen, and Jeanette Pohlen. 

Our fifth starter, Ros Gold-Onwude made the five-member All-Defensive team. Not a bad line up. 

Other Stuff:
Jayne Appel’s ankle is still sore and she is questionable for the PAC-10 tournament. 

Got a lot of nice responses to our piece by Riki Sorenson (aka Erica Mueser Sorenson '87). We hope others will prepare a little something to tell us what it was like before and after Tara VanDerveer came out west. Our number one fan (NOF) wrote that they still give out the “Lizard Lung” award to the most gullible freshmen. Sarah Boothe won it last year, awarded by the prior winner, Jeanette Pohlen. Our NOF also told us she couldn’t make it down to LA and had free tickets to the PAC-10 tournament and did C and R want to us them? We nearly tripped over each other trying to get to the computer fast enough to say yes, cats flying out of our way. Thanks, and now our NOF is now our Ultra NOF! We will do our best to report/observe/stalk all things Stanford. Hope I can get an Internet connection in LA. You know how backwards they are down south!

Other Basketball Stuff Not Stanford.
We would be remiss if we didn’t mention the UConn’s women’s basketball history-breaking streak. UConn beat Notre Dame, ranked either 6^th or 7^th depending on what poll you have. It was there 71st consecutive victory, an NCAA record. They beat the streak of 70 held by the 2001-3 UConn team. Is it correct that this class of sophomores have never lost a college game? 

So let’s talk about the all time record in college basketball, men’s or women’s, the UCLA men’s 88 game record, set in the 1970’s, is the penultimate record to chase now. Can UConn get there? Well, we hope Stanford can beat them in the NCAA tournament this year. There is a ray of hope. Notre Dame played UConn three times this season. The first time ND lost 70-46 in January, then lost 76-51 in the beginning of March, now they ONLY lost 59-44. For this game, Notre Dame kept it close for a half. Sound familiar Stanford fans? An UConn fan wrote the streak was wearing on the team a little, the team looked tired, Maya Moore looked tired, had no legs…hmmm, upset coming? UConn got a scare when Caroline Doty suffered a head injury in that game, and although played the next game, she only scored 1 point in 16 minutes. UConn won that, too, to win the BIG East championship and push the streak to 72 games. Maya Moore and Tina Charles each had an off night, so the score was only 60-32, UConn. Hmmm…maybe upset not coming! 

March 8th New Old Stanford Friends

Happy International Women's Day to You!

One of the many neat things about writing this Stanford Women’s Basketball Blog is we get mail from people connected to Stanford and we get to talk to people we otherwise wouldn’t get to meet. C and R recently got a letter from a former Stanford player named Riki Sorenson (aka Erica Mueser Sorenson '87). She was there before Tara VanDerveer under Coach Dotty McCrea and there when Tara VanDerveer came in. What a unique perspective to play for both coaches and systems. We asked her to compare the two. Here’s what she graciously contributed: 

I played back in the dark and dreary days of sub-.500 seasons. A coaching change was made at the end of my sophomore year. I remember during Tara's interview she said, "so how much fan support do you get?" We mentioned that we could usually count on my parents, a handful of fans, and that's it... they didn't even pull out the bleachers. We thought she'd never leave Ohio State (top 8 in country) for Stanford. Tara came in and got a huge budget and serious commitment from the A.D. so things changed VERY quickly. I loved playing for Tara. She didn't scream at players or at refs, she studied the game, she was efficient in practice, and she knew her stuff. The song "I can see clearly now the rain is gone" would come on and it was my theme song. Wasn't so happy when she'd say things like, "we've got to get some real horses in here," like we were just chopped liver, but really, we probably were. Still, I've never worked so hard in my life. Even Jennifer Azzi and Katy Steding learned how to work hard from us liver-choppers. The highlight of my career was during my senior season - we beat CAL at home after 3 1/2 years of losing to them (1987). When I left after the game there were people directing traffic with FLARES in the road (that's how many fans had come!). I knew that Stanford Women's Basketball had arrived! Three years later there were SCALPERS selling tix! 

One funny story... we had an award that the seniors (grandmas) would bestow on the most gullible freshman at the end of the season. It's called the "Lizard Lung" award because there was this weird stuff the trainers gave us to put on blisters and they called it Lizard Lung. One freshman, hearing about it, was horrified because she thought it was real lizard lung. Thus the award was initiated (Kami Anderson, first recipient). Jennifer Azzi won it, hands down, as a freshman, for asking, at the first day of practice, "How many teams are in the Pac-10, anyway?" I believe the award continues even now! 

A teammate had a really good line (Emily Wagner Gallagher, '89?)... before Tara came to Stanford if you told someone you played basketball at Stanford, they'd say "Wow! you must be really SMART!" After Tara and the National Championship they'd say "Wow, you must be really GOOD!"  So I get to enjoy the legacy even though I played a very small part in it...  

Cheering for Jayne Appel, the only other Stanford WBB product of Contra Costa County! 

Let’s see what would make a good sub heading?

-Nneka To the Rescue (Well, Kayla Pedersen did score that last second basket to end up with 23 points to Nneka’s 22. Did they have a little side bet going on to see who would be high scorer? However, it WAS Nneka Ogwumike’s ability to elevate and score when we seemed nervous and stuck offensively that saved the day. Although we saw Jeanette Pohlen looking for Kayla when she was pressured, and Kayla was so calm and collected when pressured and dribbled out of many jams so I guess they both saved the day and that is not an accurate headline.) 

-Surprise, Stanford wins by Defense (Yes, Stanford is not known for their defense, but their defense was phenomenal in stopping Cal and making them miss when they did get a shot at the basket-more on that later-but that makes for a boring headline.) 

-Kill off One Head of the Three Headed Monster and the Other Two Will Rise to Eat You (No, too obscure, because then we would have to explain that with our Jayne Appel out, one part of the three trees, or monster heads, we still have Kayla and Nneka, and you can’t stop them, too, and oh never mind if you have to explain it it’s just not funny…so how about…) 

-Jayne Appel on Sidelines with Sprained Ankle. C and R Have Heart Attacks! (That’s more like it for a sub headline. Wait, hold it, we are getting ahead of the story, and whenever C and R go anywhere, like Cal, there’s always a story, and this is no exception. So let’s start at the beginning) 

Perhaps a headline should be "Surprise, Surprise, Stanford fans find parking in Berkeley". After we find our parking space, C and R stop for a snack and R has a breakfast burrito and C has a falafel with extra tahini sauce, in an only-in-Berkeley Greek/American restaurant. Food was excellent BTW.

So C and R continue our walk in to Haas Pavilion for the game between the Cal Bears and The Stanford Women’s Basketball Team. A large and spirited crowd is outside Haas Pavilion and it is a carnival-like atmosphere.

Once inside, the place is about 3/4 full with and an announced attendance of 5,137. We try to figure out where our general admission ticket allows us to sit, while eyeing seats we could possibly move down to… (I know, we are shameless. C blames R). While moving around, R sees her friend from Cal, who we will call P (I know, R has a friend. A friend not named C). She introduces C and R to her other Cal friends. We make it a point to promptly forget their names. No hard feelings, just C and R are old and forgetful. Then P says what’s up with your girl Jayne in sweats with that boot? You could have knocked C and R down with a feather. We stare at the blonde women in black sweats and a gray T-Shirt (she didn’t want to give in totally to the black sweats of injury). You would think we would know that Jayne was injured. We excuse ourselves and say we need to go find out. 

C spots a lot of reporters at press row. She thinks she could go down there and ask, say she is part of the press, find out what happened. She starts down the stairs (which are angled a little too steeply, if you ask her, what’s up with that, Cal?) when a big Usher appears before her and C abruptly alters course down a tunnel. Rats, foiled again. They are checking tickets before anyone can move into the closer sections. 

C and R locate the one section where Stanford fans are allowed to sit with their general admission tickets. We figure we will be safe here and can even break out our tinkle bells. Another group of Stanford fans has theirs already out. They look like Christmas bells from the tree. C congratulates them on the bells and smiles inwardly. We see a large group of people across from us courtside, so large that they take up an entire section to themselves and are all wearing the same red shirt. Must be more Stanford fans. 

While sitting in the Stanford section, C sees the Ushers are distracted with something, so she quickly moves, jumping over rows of seats and winding her way down to the front row. Unfortunately, Haas pavilion has a sunken floor, so the first row of seats stops at a railing and then drops away 10 feet to the floor. On Stanford’s court, courtside means you are sitting on the floor and can reach out and touch the players (and R once touched the ref as he ran up and down the floor). So even though the Ushers have not caught her and C is on the front row, she cannot easily get to the reporters. A group of fans blocks her access to get closer to them to shout so she is stuck on the side, right behind the Stanford bench. C sees assistant Coach Bobbi Kelsey alone. She figures this is her one chance. She yells, “Hey, what’s the matter with Jayne”. Bobbi looks up and says, “She’ll be all right.” Translated, she means, “Get away, crazy person”. C asks again and Bobbi gives the same answer, and is now wondering where security is when you need them, and the Stanford Tree gets protected from fans, why can’t I? C finally catches on and skedaddles out of there before the Ushers discover her. 

Walking back to the Stanford section, a Stanford fan asks what she said to Bobbi. C says she was trying to find out about Jayne Appel’s injury. The fan says Jayne sprained her ankle in practice and it is not that bad, and head coach Tara VanDerveer is just resting her as a precautionary measure and to have her ready for the Pac-10 Tournament. C repeats that to R when she is seated and another fan says, oh no, it was quite bad and almost broke and she will be out indefinitely. Just goes to show you can’t believe everything you hear from fans, and can’t believe everything you read on the Internet, especially if it is from us. 

(No, we watched the taped game and the annoucers confirmed she rolled her ankle in practice doing a lay-up-by herself and she could have played today but Tara did want to keep her for the tournament. Jayne packed her gear just in case Tara changed her mind. She didn’t. Also read in the paper that a tour of 40 little girls were watching practice at the precise moment Jayne rolled her ankle and was hugging the basket post and trying not to swear and/or faint in front of them… poor Jayne!) 

So anyhooo, thinking fast, C quickly texts our blogging partners at California Golden Blogs and asks if they can revise their prediction of the final score of this game. Actually, C and R are nervous about Jayne being out. She is our emotional leader and if she does well on the court, our team does well and vice versa. We could very well lose this game. 

Cal does a very nice senior tribute before the game for the Cal seniors. Alexis Gray Lawson is everyone’s favorite and the Stanford section even stands up for her. They also thank the Cal seniors in the band and on the spirit squad. We thought that was classy. They gave flowers to the Stanford seniors, too. Then they introduced the Stanford starters. Freshman Joslyn Tinkle gets the nod to start in Jayne’s place. Maybe Tara thinks Cal might think Joslyn is Jayne out there, they do look alike. Then they do a lot of theatrics with lights and stuff for the Cal starters. Reminded us of an NBA game. It was fun and certainly energetic, but we know Tara would never stand for that at Maples. 

We win the jump but we look nervous. Cal is pressuring point guard Jeanette Pohlen, just one guard on her, not a full court press and yet she turns it over. When we do get it to our basket, we have no inside presence and it is clear we are missing Jayne offensively. It’s like four players are on the court and the fifth is missing from the middle. What do we do? This does not look good. Then our defense kicks in. 

When we are on the defensive end of the court, it is like Stanford mentally says, okay, this is what I know how to do. I don’t need Jayne, just cover my assignment. Every PAC-10 coach’s pick for defender of the year, Ros Gold-Onwude is on Cal’s Alexis Gray Lawson like glue. 

C and R have been watching Stanford for years and C has even written a post conveying her surprise that Stanford is holding PAC-10 foes to low scoring totals because we are not known for our defense, but she sees she has clearly been off the mark all season long. Our defense, while not flashy, is stifling. They just do it so effortlessly you forget it is there. UConn likes to defend by stealing the pass and quickly taking the ball the other way for points. That creates highlights you see on ESPN. Stanford really just shuts you down. They shut down your leading scorer. They shut down your passes. They shut the door on getting any rebounds. They might guard you for the whole shot clock and make you take a bad last second shot or get the shot clock violation. Those plays might not make the highlight reels, but they consistently stop offenses from scoring. How could C have been so blind all season? Oh, they do one more thing on defense really well, something C has never seen another team do, and that is defend the screen really well. 

So let’s say Ros is guarding Alexis at the top of the three-point line, Ros’ back is to the basket. A Cal player comes up and makes a wall on Ros’ right shoulder. Alexis will continue moving to Ros’ right and get around both bodies and either pull up and shoot uncontested or dribble around both bodies and head to the basket. This usually works. What Stanford does in a case like that is double team the ball handler. So as the Cal player on Ros’ right shoulder is holding her in place, Nneka is behind the Cal player, now on Ros’ right side, too. As Alexis dribbles to Ros’s right, Nneka comes out to meet the ball as Ros fights over the top of the screen. Alexis cannot shoot uncontested or drive to the basket. If Alexis crosses over to her other hand away from Nneka, she meets Ros. So the most logical thing to do is…dribble backwards away from the basket. Now, in that fleeting moment Nneka and Ros are both on Alexis, the screener is open. But the guard cannot see her or get a clean pass to her because of Ros and long-armed Nneka. It is a little thing, but done well and stops the scoring. All the Stanford bigs do it well: Kayla, Jayne, Joslyn, Nneka. Cal tried to screen all night and could not get their best scorer, Alexis, free. Around the second or third play of the game, Nneka came out to double team off the screen and harassed the ball handler so much she stole it. She was alone with a path to the basket. Unfortunately she had to dribble the ball half the court. Did we mention Nneka is not the best dribbler? She lost it, of course. Hmm, might want to work on that in the off-season! 

Just under the 15-minute mark left in the first half, Nneka committed her first foul. C and R held their collective breath. Tara takes her out of the game. Nooooo, not with Jayne on the bench. I mean, we hate it anyway when she takes Nneka out any time, but we need Nneka and Kayla if we are to win this game. Tara agrees with us because a minute and a half later she puts Nneka back in. Whew. It was just a token punishment. Later Nneka dribbles off her foot. Nneka, off-season. 

With about three minutes left in the first half, the score is 17-20, Stanford. We have held them without a basket for 6 minutes and then 4 minutes. So yes, this is a low scoring game for both teams, and we are only up 3 points. Tara puts in veteran Micelle Harrison with 4 minutes left. We like the fifth year veteran, and even though she might not score a lot, she can add her maturity and poise to Stanford.  She gets a lay-up, a rebound, an assist and a block, followed by another rebound in her four minutes of play. She also looked aggressive and gave us a spark off the bench. We go into the locker room with a 26-19 lead. Seven points is great, but had we had Jayne in there, you could probably add about 8 more to that total. We are still not out of the woods yet. 

We wander around at half time and see that group of Stanford fans with the matching red shirts. They say “House of Jayne” and “UnstoppAppel” on the back and a picture of Jayne on the front. We find out it is about 60 of Jayne’s family and friends who came out to support her. We figuratively cry that Jayne could not play this last game of her regular season. We later find out from the TV broadcast that Jayne didn’t know about the shirts and said to her Dad a typical teenage, “Oh Dadddd,” when she saw them. We also read later that Jayne had missed only one other regular-season game, the first one of her freshman season. She had played in 138 straight games since, the most by any female player at Stanford. More than Candice Wiggins! What an incredible career! 

Then as we where coming out of the bathroom, R says to a woman in a Jayne shirt, “You’re Jayne’s Mom, aren’t, you?” She answered yes and we would have bugged her more, but another stranger was already talking her ear off and asking about Jayne’s ankle as we eavesdropped. She confirmed it wasn’t that bad. Cool, we got to see Jayne’s mom! 

Than in the closing seconds, as we were getting ready to go back to our seats R says, “Hey, there’s Jayne Appel!” Sure enough, Jayne, Sarah Boothe and assistant coach Kate Paye were heading to the women’s bathroom. (What, Cal, you don't have enough women’s facilities in your visitor’s locker room?). 

C and R, like the good stalkers we are, follow. Okay, R hates when C says we are stalkers, we are just fans who get star-struck and don’t really stalk or break the law or hide in bushes and take photos or anything, but this was stalking. C starts meticulously washing her hands. R announces loudly, “Boy I sure like those ‘House of Jayne’ shirts that group was wearing.” C embarrassed, looks at her and mouths, “Shut UP.” R announces again that the picture on the front sure was cool or some such nonsense, C can’t remember because she is thoroughly mortified and staring daggers at R. The women emerge from the stalls and surround C to wash their hands. R hides behind a wall mostly because she knows C wants to kill her. C says, “Give ‘em Heck,” to the trio, well, what she really said rhymed with tinkle bell, but the trio just want to get out of there as fast as they could. So Jayne and Sarah and Kate, that was us, those two idiots in the bathroom grinning like, well, idiots. Hi, we are usually not so dorky. We text the California Golden Blog Boys “Sorry we couldn’t meet, we were too busy stalking Jayne Appel and family!” 

The game blessedly begins again so we can’t make ourselves into fools anymore and Cal comes out in a full court press this time. They pressure Pohlen and they pass quickly to either Nneka or Kayla, our two remaining trees. We break the press and get some fast break points. We said it at the top of this (very long) blog, Nneka to the rescue, but we’ll say it again, she rescues us offensively again and again. We are up by 15, with the score 45-30 with 10 minutes gone in the second half. That means Cal has only scored 11 points in 10 minutes. 

At one point Nneka makes a great basket and gets fouled and looks to the Stanford beanh and screams and pumps her fist. We love the attitude! Wait, we recently wrote a post saying we didn’t like Brittney Griner’s attitude when she blocked our dunked on people. The difference is Brittney would look at them and make the gestures to intimidate. Nneka did the gesture to her bench and it was a celebration, not an intimidation play. That’s what we think about our polite and precious Nneka, anyway. 

Tinkle gets s a three and a lay up to go with her other 3 in the first half for a total of 8 points and our tinkle bells were busy. 

All game long during breaks the Cal spirit squad has been throwing T-Shirts to the crowd. C instinctively stands up and waves her arms, but for some reason when they see the sea of red, they don’t throw any our way. Now in the closing minutes of T-Shirt tossing, C stands up because it is an in-joke now with the Stanford fans, wink, wink, we know they won’t throw one our way. The guy in blue looks at C for a long moment…Will he…. 

He does. 

He lets it fly and it lands right in C’s hands. She doesn’t’ even have to climb over anybody! 

Someone says, “throw it back” like in baseball when the opposing team hits a home run ball. But no, C is keeping this. First, she breaks out her knife, because what good Stanford fan doesn’t travel to Cal with their knife? No, just kidding, just kidding! Really! C was a former Girl Scout and Boy Scout Leader so she is always prepared and carries one of those mini pocketknife all-in-one-tools around with her everywhere. You never know when you might need to unscrew a Phillips head screw (no serousily, she bleives that). So her little pocketknife thingie has scissors and she cuts the sleeves off the Cal shirt. Then she gets out her sharpie marker (remember, always prepared) and scratches out anything Cal on it and writes Stanford and “Fear The Trees!” (She forgot to get to Stanford to buy the real deal shirt) She was going to then draw pictures of a healthy Kayla and Nneka and a forlorn Jayne in her boot when she realized she really should pay attention to the game. Tinkle blocks the heck out of Cal. The TV announcers said that Tinkle contributed well with her rebounding. She had 9 for the game. 

She put the shirt on over her Stanford shirt so her red sleeves stick out. She watches Kayla gets that last basket as we mentioned to send Stanford home with a 63-48 victory. Kayla and Nneka combine for 45 of those 63 points and each had double figures in rebounds. Joslyn, our baby tree had 8 of those 63 points, so the those trees combined for 53 of the 63 points. Wow! Oh, those three trees had 33 of the 42 rebounds.

Hi, this is C here, reporting on something about women’s basketball that doesn’t have anything to do with Stanford. One thing I have been meaning to do is write about Baylor’s freshman sensation Brittney Griner, but I have been too busy/lazy. I thought I could continue being busy/lazy, but this week’s circumstances have sorta forced the issue. So here I am talking about Brittney Griner. 

Let’s recap. Brittney Griner is a freshman that stands 6’8" and has already been a You Tube sensation for her dunking abilities in high school, and was expected to "play above the rim”, meaning dunking many times in college and being an incredible shot blocker. Baylor head coach Kim Mulkey, perhaps giving in to the hype, started her in their first game this year, against powerhouse Tennessee, of all teams. In my opinion, she was not ready to play college level ball, especially not against a well-coached Tennessee team. I watched her being tentative and she stood around with her hands down while rebounding. She did not move if the rebound did not come directly to her. I was sure she would be great player soon, but questioned the coach’s decision to start her with so much media attention on her. Looking back, even Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer did not start Jayne Appel in her first game as a freshman, but used her off the bench wisely. She made sure she was ready before inserting her (permanently) in the starting line up. 

Since that first game Brittney has become more confident, has dunked in several games, and even twice in a game, the first women’s player to do so. Not only do defenses have to worry about her dunking and shooting at the top of her elevation, which is nearly unstoppable, but they have also have to worry about her blocking shots like nobody’s business. She makes opposing players alter their game when they drive in on her. She already holds the Big 12 single-season blocks record. Good for her, glad to see her coming along. ESPN’s Graham Hays agrees.

Although I did read one team beat Baylor by raining threes down on Griner and company, with Griner standing helplessly under the basket. If Stanford does play them in the NCAA tourney, I am sure Tara VanDeveer will take note of that.

However, something disturbing happened. On March 4^th, Brittney Griner punched Texas Tech’s Jordan Barncastle in the face after the two tangled in the second half. Watch the hit (and Jordan’s Barncastle’s foul) here. Brittney broke Jordan’s nose with that swing. 

In case you can’t get that video, Griner and Barncastle were battling for position near the lane before Barncastle spun around and sent Griner towards the ground. As a foul was called on Barncastle, Griner straightened up and took two steps toward her before throwing a roundhouse punch with her right hand. Make no mistake, Barncastle was playing dirty. However, it’s about on the same level we here at Stanford have seen teams do to Jayne Appel and Nneka Ogwumike. Neither has punched anybody. 

After the hit, both teams pushed and shoved, players had to be separated and technicals were given. Officials stopped play to review the tape for about 10 minutes before assessing a flagrant and technical foul against Griner and ejecting her from the game. Baylor’s Morghan Medlock was also given a technical foul and the Tech bench also received a technical.  Baylor still won 69-60.

Brittney will be suspended for two games. She will miss the last regular season game and the next game she will miss happens to be the start of the Big 12 Tournament. She also issued a written apology. 

Mechelle Voepel, also with ESPN weighs in with her opinion, one C and R highly value. Mechelle makes a very astute observation. In that same game where Brittney dunked twice, her team was beating Texas State 99-18 at the time. Brittney, being about 19 years old, got a little emotional. Mechelle wrote:
“At one point, she swatted away a shot, and then sort of hovered over and stared down at her opponent. It was brief but noticeable. And after one of her dunks, she ran back up the court yelling, shaking her head and tapping her chest.” 

C and R never like “showboating, trash talking, taunting or bullying” of any kind, and it has no place in sports. Neither does punching.

Quoting Mechelle again:
“People can, and will, point out the physical contact that came before the punch. But players getting locked up, frustrated and overly forceful with each other happens quite often in basketball. Usually a foul is called on one side or both, and the official tells the participants to cool it…. However, taking it to the next level of ‘losing your cool’ -- throwing a punch -- is a place you just don't go. And if you do, you know you're in trouble.” 

I agree. There is no place for throwing a punch in basketball. And if so, you get punished. Okay, I just paraphrased Mechelle, but I think you know where I stand.

See ya at Cal for an early 12:30 PM tip-off,
C-

Last post, we answered questions about the upcoming Cal vs. Stanford Women’s Basketball game posed by the TwistNHook and Nor Cal Nick of California Golden Blogs. Today they answered our Q’s. The answers were surprisingly intelligent! Hee hee. No, really! 

Check out the link below to the story about the Stanford Tree! It’s a classic and they have won a special place in C and R’s hearts, even though they are still from Cal. BTW, C once bet R that she wouldn’t touch the ref as he ran up and down the court when we were sitting court side. She grabbed his pants twice before we had to stop her. He didn't notice but C was sure we were all going to get kicked out. Funny the Tree gets special protection at Cal games! 

Here we go (and of course C and R can’t be quiet for more than a paragraph, so we added some comments in parenthesis).  

1) A lot was made about the incoming freshmen crew Cal recruited. We have been too busy paying attention to Stanford to notice. Give us a run down on how have the Fab Freshmen have been this year and what they can improve upon for next year. 

A: Inconsistent, but not in a way that’s particularly surprising.  Unfortunately, one of the seven, Tierra Rogers, was diagnosed with a heart condition prior to the season and will never suit up again.  But besides that setback, most events have been positive.  The names you’ll hear most often would be Layshia Clarendon and DeNesha Stallworth.  Layshia is the best guard of the class and can look pretty great at times, especially when she’s attacking the basket.  DeNesha has impressive post moves for a frosh and dropped 30 points on USC earlier in the year.  Gennifer Brandon is a great rebounder and is gradually learning to control her explosiveness.  Eliza Pierre has great defensive instincts and has been a solid distributor when she plays the point.  Talia Caldwell and Brenna Heater are the other bigs.  Talia is a solid all-around player with the exception of her free throw shooting.  Brenna’s season has been derailed by a number of injuries and her main goal for next season will be to not get concussed again.

(We were very saddened to hear last fall that Tierra Rogers was diagnosed with a heart ailment and could not continue her career in basketball- C and R) 

2) This explanation of the PAC-10 standings and the place Cal could end up for the PAC-10 tournament in is form the Cal website:  Cal enters the week in sole possession of third place in the Pac-10 standings, holding a half-game advantage over the USC Trojans. Cal and USC both have six losses, but Cal has 11 wins. USC will play a pair of games this week, hosting Arizona on Thursday and Arizona State on Saturday. If Cal and USC end up in a tie for third, USC holds the tiebreak advantage over Cal and would earn the three seed in the Pac-10 Tournament, pushing Cal into the fourth seed. If Arizona State wins both of their games and Cal loses, then ASU and Cal would be tied for third. Once again, Arizona State owns the tiebreak advantage and Cal would be seeded fourth. Cal could also end up as the five seed if ASU, USC, and Cal tie for third place (with a Cal loss, two ASU wins, and a USC victory over Arizona)  Between this, the infield fly rule in baseball and the biased way soccer refs call off sides, which is easier to understand?

A: Well, I’m a gigantic basketball nerd, so the only thing I don’t understand about the scenario is the necessity for conference tournaments.  I’ll say that the infield fly rule probably causes more confusion.  It’s easy to understand soccer calls, but only if you have connections with the Italian mafia that dictate the calls.  This question also reminded me that Cal lost to ASU and USC on two different buzzer beaters.  So I guess what I really don’t understand is why the cruel hand of fate mocks me so!

3) At the same moment, the Stanford band leaves Stanford by train for the PAC-10 tournament in LA at USC and the CAL band leaves Berkeley by bus for the very same tournament and the train from Stanford is moving at speed of 40 miles per hour, and the bus from Berkeley is moving at speed of 60 miles per hour, except when they got pulled over and ticketed for doing 60 in a 45 MPH construction zone and the distance to LA from Stanford is 370 miles and Berkeley is about 40 more miles up the road and a plane takes 6 hours to fly from San Francisco to New York, and 5 hours to return back. What is the name of the guy in the Stanford Tree outfit? 

A: Twistnhook is the most qualified to answer this question, based on his up close and personal relationship with the Stanford tree. And since I majored in Geography my ability to answer a math question died upon my alleged graduation from high school.  So I’ll have to make a wild guess…Condleezza Rice?

(No, sorry, we were going for Dayton, Ohio, and Jeff Tedford, but keep that last part a secret-C and R)

4) PAC-10 SCORING RACE- Going into the final game of the regular season, Alexis Gray-Lawson leads the race for the Pac-10 scoring title. Gray-Lawson is averaging 18.1 points per game with Stanford's Nnemkadi Ogwumike at 18.0. Gray-Lawson has scored three more points this season, with 508 to Ogwumike's 505. In Conference games, Gray-Lawson is averaging 20.6 ppg to Oregon's Taylor Lilley's 19.7. Ogumike is in third with 17.9. How long will it be before Nneka gets a foul and Tara VanDerveer banishes her to the bench? Bonus points for correctly guessing the minute mark and estimating how many points she would have scored if not on the bench!

A: Man, Ogwumike burned us for 24 last time, and unless the high pitched cheering of a few thousand children sway the refs, Cal will have their hands full.  Hopefully Gennifer Brandon and DeNesha Stallworth are feeling aggressive on offense, because foul trouble would be the best way to take the Appel/Ogwumike/Pedersen monster out.  If the Bears can hold Nneka below 20 I’ll be thrilled…but only if nobody else from Stanford scores over 20 to make up for it.

(Ohh, good point. You can stop one of the three trees, but there is always another to take its place-C and R)

5) Predict how many points Alexis Gray-Lawson will drop on Stanford.

A: Well, she scored 37 the last time in Berkeley, but only 9 earlier this year in Maples.  Average that out and we get…24?  Hmm, that sounds high when she’ll be the complete focus of the Cardinal defense.  Lexi is unusual this year in that she tends to score either 35 points or 15, but rarely in between.  When she knows she’s on she’ll keep shooting, but when she knows she’s off she usually doesn’t force up a bunch of shots.  Cal had better hope she’s on, but I’ll predict a conservative 17 points.

See ya Saturday at Cal. Anyone know of a good place to eat in Berkeley?

Most of C and R’s fans know we have been working with Swish Appeal, which is building up articles on Women’s PAC-10 basketball and the WNBA. Well, Swish Appeal put us in touch with…the enemy. Namely, TwistNHook and Nor Cal Nick of California Golden Blogs.

Here are CGB Qs. 
1.  I've heard a rumor that Jane Appel is a space alien from the planet Xyanatron.  I believe this rumor to be true, because no human could play as well as her.  What evidence do you have that Stanford has not been playing with an illegal alien recruit the entire time?????? 

A: Her green card

2.  Stanford is in a weird position - clearly the #2 team in the nation, but behind a historically great team they've already lost to.  What would qualify as a successful conclusion to the season for Stanford fans?  National Championship or bust?

A: Between National Championship or bust, C and R will always pick National Championship. Honestly, we hope to meet UConn in the final game and not embarrass ourselves.

3.  Besides UConn, the only time all season that the Cardinal came close to losing was on the road against UCLA.  Is there anything the Bruins did in that game that Cal could learn from when they try to pull the upset?

A: We don’t know because the game was NOT TELEVISED! All we saw was that stupid Gametracker with the little red and blue icons running around and jumping whenever there was a shot. If you want to stop Stanford, you have to stop the little red icons from shooting and make the little blue icons get every rebound.

4.  Stanford will be losing Jayne Appel and Rosalyn Gold-Onyuwe (and potentially JJ Hones, Michelle Harrison and Melanie Murphy, depending on whether they decide to return).  Any chance some other team has a shot at winning the conference next year, or will a whole new set of blue chip recruits fill the gaps?

A: Cal Golden Blogs, meet incoming freshmen Chiney Ogwumike, Nneka’s inch taller and just as good if not better than sister. Nneka’s sister, meet the Cal Golden Blog boys. Now jump over their heads.

5.  Predict a final score.

A: C will eat one hot dog with lots of mustard,
one soft pretzel with lots of mustard
and garlic fries.
R will have a sprite with lots of ice
and popcorn.
C wins the Pepto Bismol.
Oh, And Stanford 86 Cal 67

Here are C and R's Qs for CGB: 

1. A lot was made about the incoming freshmen crew Cal recruited. We have been too busy paying attention to Stanford to notice. Give us a run down on how have the Fab Freshmen have been this year and what they can improve upon for next year. 

2. This explanation of the PAC-10 standings and the place Cal could end up for the PAC-10 tournament in is form the Cal website:
-Cal enters the week in sole possession of third place in the Pac-10 standings, holding a half-game advantage over the USC Trojans. Cal and USC both have six losses, but Cal has 11 wins. USC will play a pair of games this week, hosting Arizona on Thursday and Arizona State on Saturday. If Cal and USC end up in a tie for third, USC holds the tiebreak advantage over Cal and would earn the three seed in the Pac-10 Tournament, pushing Cal into the fourth seed. If Arizona State wins both of their games and Cal loses, then ASU and Cal would be tied for third. Once again, Arizona State owns the tiebreak advantage and Cal would be seeded fourth. Cal could also end up as the five seed if ASU, USC, and Cal tie for third place (with a Cal loss, two ASU wins, and a USC victory over Arizona)-

Between this, the infield fly rule in baseball and the biased way soccer refs call off sides, which is easier to understand? 

3. At the same moment, the Stanford band leaves Stanford by train for the PAC-10 tournament in LA and the CAL band leaves Berkeley by bus for the very same tournament and the train from Stanford is moving at speed of 40 miles per hour, and the bus from Berkeley is moving at speed of 60 miles per hour, except when they got pulled over and ticketed for doing 60 in a 45 MPH construction zone and the distance to LA from Stanford is 370 miles and Berkeley is about 40 more miles up the road and a plane takes 6 hours to fly from San Francisco to New York, and 5 hours to return back. What is the name of the guy in the Stanford Tree outfit? 

4. PAC-10 SCORING RACE Going into the final game of the regular season, Alexis Gray-Lawson leads the race for the Pac-10 scoring title. Gray-Lawson is averaging 18.1 points per game with Stanford's Nnemkadi Ogwumike at 18.0. Gray-Lawson has scored three more points this season, with 508 to Ogwumike's 505. In Conference games, Gray-Lawson is averaging 20.6 ppg to Oregon's Taylor Lilley's 19.7. Ogumike is in third with 17.9. How long will it be before Nneka gets a foul and Tara VanDerveer banishes her to the bench? Bonus points for correctly guessing the minute mark and estimating how many points she would have scored if not on the bench! 

5. Predict how many points Alexis Gray-Lawson will drop on Stanford. 

We’re still waiting for your answers, boys…(We think they had a little trouble on the math portion)

Well, C and R are afraid this will not be a very good run down of the Stanford Women’s Basketball game against Arizona. It wasn’t on TV, of course, and Gametracker was down for every game, at least on our computer. We got KZSU live on the Internet, but it was hard for us to follow the action. But then luck of all luck, a fan who was there courtside sent us a first-person account of the game! Stick around for the end of this post to get an eye-witness view. 

We did hear JJ Hones was a starter for Ros. We found out later that Ros Gold-Onwude was in the “black sweat suit of injury” because she took a blow to the head in the win over Arizona State two days ago. They wouldn’t’ come out and say it was a concession, but rather they were being cautious. Well, with all the uproar about t concussions in the news lately, we are glad they are being cautious. 

And we did hear when Jayne Appel grabbed her fifth rebound of the game for a total of 1,215. When she did that around the 4-minute mark in the first half, she broke Lisa Leslie’s PAC-10 career rebounding record. Jayne would end up with 8 rebounds and 11 points it the game. 

Arizona kept it close in the first and got within 3 in the closing minutes. Stanford had the ball last and Jayne got a lay-up in the closing seconds so we took a shaky 32-27 lead into the locker room. 

Then C’s computer asked if I wanted to install updates. C absentmindedly clicked “yes”. Normally her computer installs updates in the background and she can keep working. This time the update was for stupid Windows Media Player, the device that was letting her listen to KZSU. Media Player shut down while it installed 11 updates. Several minutes later, the computer was still on one of 11 updates. (Apple computer fans, no need to write in). 

Ten minutes later, C gets KZSU back online and the score is 48-37. Still relatively close. Then Kayla Pedersen hits a three. Then she hits another and now its 54-37 and it doesn’t sound so close anymore Kayla would finish with 26 points and 8 rebounds.  Love hearing that Kayla is shooting and scoring, especially in front of friends and family as Kayla is from Arizona. Maybe we should fly them out to every game. Then all of a sudden it’s 64-38 us, with five minutes left and it seems we have really limited their scoring. With about two minutes left and the subs come in. The final score was Stanford 75-48 

Next is our Johnny-on-the-spot reporter, who we shall call MA, with his eyewitness account. The remarks in parentheses are C and R’s. 

>>>>>>
I'm back home from the game, a 75-48 win over Arizona, and ready to give my report.  I'm going to try this bullet-point style, since my memory doesn't seem to operate well in linear fashion...

• I have to note first that player of the game goes to Kayla Pedersen.  She was, as always, everywhere on the court, and with Nneka not too involved-more on that later, Kayla couldn't have been more clutch.  She was hitting three-pointers, putting in a couple of key put backs, and just generally seemed to be where she needed to be throughout the game.  I don't have the box score, but she accounted for at least a third of the team's points.
• Nneka Ogwumike didn't end up being a factor at all during the first half, primarily because of foul trouble.  The trouble all started with a phantom foul call within the first minute or so of the game.  One of the Arizona players was coming up the court with the basketball and tripped over her own legs on her way to half-court.  Nneka happened to be in the neighborhood, and even though the replay confirmed that Nneka didn't even come close to the other player, she got called for a tripping foul.  Tara yanked her right away and put Joslyn Tinkle in -and our bells got to tinkling!.  When Nneka went back in somewhere around the 12-minute mark, she got called for another foul pretty quickly -this one legitimate after Nneka didn't get position on a rebound- and came right back out.
• The upside of Nneka's absence was a good deal of playing time for Joslyn during the first half -not so much during the second, when Nneka stayed in the game for most of the half.  We started our bells ringing, and even had an extra set to pass to the Stanford-clad family sitting next to us.  They asked whether we had started the whole bells tradition, and we of course deferred credit to the C and R blog.  As it turned out, the nice folks sitting next to us were none other than the Tinkle family!  Joslyn's grandmother apparently lives nearby, and her mom was there for the game, too.  Mama Tinkle reads your blog, you will be happy to know, and loves the whole tinkle bell concept (Yes, C and R did know and a big shout out to Mrs. Tinkle and Family! And Grandma Tinkle, too! We gave a genuine Tinkle bell to Mr. Tinkle when he was at Stanford).  I, of course, turned into a gushing fan upon learning who the family was and went on and on about how great we think Joslyn will be for our team.  (Oh, aren’t we all just gushing fans?!) Joslyn, for her part, had a quiet but solid performance, getting just a few points but really playing good, active defense.
• I can't believe I've gone this long without mentioning Jayne, who got her Pac-10-record-setting 1215th rebound during the first half.  They played on for a little bit, and during the final media timeout of the first half, the stadium announcer recognized Appel for having broken Lisa Leslie's old record.  That's a heck of an accomplishment, and she's not done yet.  Any idea what the NCAA record is?  (Career NCAA Div 1 record 2,034—Courtney Paris, Oklahoma) Appel wasn't scoring a lot of points today as she got fronted and doubled all game long, but she was still a big presence, getting attention on the offensive end and doing her usual shot-blocking and rebound-gobbling on the defensive end.  And I only saw her get beat down the court once during the game, just over halfway through the first half, at which point I told my wife that Jayne was looking a little tired, and Tara apparently overheard me because she promptly subbed Jayne out for a breather.
• My wife, E, pointed out an amusing thing during the game.  One of Arizona's players, who was on Appel most of the game, would frequently supplement her defense by yelling/stuttering "B-b-b-b-b-b!"  I couldn't tell whether she was trying to communicate to her teammates-if she was, complete words might have been better or just trying to distract the ball-handler.  It was certainly amusing to listen to. (She was probably trying to say “ball”, and then yell “dead” if the player stopped dribbling, a common tactic to unnerve a player, but we are sure wouldn’t bother Jayne)
• It should be noted that Ros was in pants and a t-shirt for the game today.  She got knocked in the head pretty hard while scrambling for a ball Thursday at ASU, and was taken out of the game in what appeared to be a very appropriate precautionary move (we agree!).  The Tinkle family told us that Ros suffered a concussion from the incident-not sure of their source, but it was a reasonable inference, so she must have been kept out of today's game to make sure that she recovers.  I hope that she's feeling okay and that she's able to come back, but her health is top priority, and I'm glad to see that the team is protecting her.  We'll be glad to have her back when she's ready.
• My last note is a question:  what happened to Lindy LaRocque?  I haven't noticed her getting much playing time this season, but she did see a fair amount of court time in today's game, probably because of Ros's absence.  Lindy used to have more of a swagger, and would shoot the ball anytime she had a little bit of space -and sometimes when she didn't.  I don't think she shot the ball once in today's game, even though she had some open looks.  Maybe the coaches told her to cut back on her fire-away approach and she took it too much to heart?  I, for one, loved her fearlessness, and it just wasn't there today--I hope that's a fluke and not a trend.

OK, I think that about covers what stands out to me.  As for the Arizona fans, they weren't a problem because they mostly weren't there.  Attendance was barely over 2,000, and there were a sizeable number of Stanford fans accounting for a chunk of that total.  Arizona, for their part, didn't get a whole lot done to energize their fans.  They did hang around for much of the first half, but this was yet another game in the apparent pattern of Stanford starting slow and allowing teams to stay close until the second half march towards a big win.  Ibekwe, their best player-I think you all called her Arizona's version of Nneka- (yes, also baby Nneka and Nneka’s twin) was pretty quiet throughout the first, and didn't start making good-looking plays until it was already too late for them to mean much to the outcome (although we did hear Ibekwe wrapped her arms around Jayne at one point and Jayne got called for the foul).  But E and I had a lot of fun.  And I hope that you will give a big shout-out on our behalf to the Tinkle family, who were kind enough to lend us their Joslyn's talent for a few more years to come. 

Cheers,
MA