Just a quick note on the Stanford Women’s Basketball team’s 75th home win, 69th Pac-12 win and 18th consecutive win overall tonight. They beat USC 69-52. Nneka Ogwumike lead all scorers with 22 points and 8 boards and sister Chiney scored 21 and had a double-double with 12 rebounds. She also had a career high 6 blocked shots. And she was a master at getting position to get those 12 rebounds.

Stanford started out quickly and was easily up 21-9, 10 minutes into the contest. Then all-everything Nneka had a seat, what with 2 fouls and all. Head coach Tara VanDerveer thought she could afford to rest her. And you guessed it, Stanford’s offensive went stagnate without her. At one point Chiney looked for someone to pass to on offense and when no one seemed to want the ball, she put her head down and drove to the basket to make her own points. All we can say is Chin-ney saved the day. Toni Kokenis played the third string and got 15 for the game, and that was it for Stanford scoring (La la la la la, we can’t hear you naysayers and detractors... more on you later).

Half time Stanford was up 33-22, and surprisingly, USC held a 20-19 rebounding edge. They did that by primarily focusing on boxing the heck out of the sisters Ogwumike. Did we mention USC is one of the many Pac-12 teams that also have sisters? They have Briana and Stefanie Gilbreath, who scored 11 and 9 respectively for USC. But you can only stop an Ogwumike for so long, and around the 13-minute mark in the second, the Ogwumikes made their move, opening up the lead with their athleticism and ability to find the basket. They just wear people out. Final score 69-52.

Subplots:
Tara VanDerveer left in the scoring sisters until the end. Why? Stanford had an 18-point lead with 4 minutes left. Why not rest your starters and give the youngsters a chance? Well, because Tara VanDerveer is having a feud with all of the East Coast. Think of it as an East Coast-West Coast thang.

Seems ESPN analysist Carolyn Peck dissed Stanford and the Pac-12 by publicly saying the Pac-12 is weak and Duke deserves to be the number 4 seed instead of Stanford when the NCAA tourney starts. Tara took umbrage to that (hey that’s twice in a month we’ve used such a big word) and said to SF Chron "Duke loses at home to Connecticut and loses to Kentucky," VanDerveer said, "but they should be the No. 1 seed because they play in this great ACC? What's so great about North Carolina?"

She pointed out that the No. 22 Tar Heels (17-5) are ranked even though they lost to Connecticut by 51 and Duke by 40 and their RPI is 101st in the country. "That's crazy," she said.
Stanford, by contrast has an RPI of 4. RPI stands for rating percentage index or what we think of as strength of schedule. Duke’s is 8.

If Tara is outraged, then Stanford fans are outraged and C and R are no exception, and we took to Twitter:

@StanfordWBBBlog
Coach Tara VanDerveer is mad at @CAROLYNPECK for picking Duke as #4 seed over Stanford, no respect for Pac-12

Due to the magic of twitter, Carolyn Peck wrote back to us. Little ol C and R. Here’s her tweet:

@CAROLYNPECK
@StanfordWBBBlog No disrespect 2 Stanford but the ACC has 4 teams in the top 10 & total of 6 in top 25. Committee has 2 consider that.

I think that’s Tara’s point. At least half of those ACC teams shouldn’t be in the top 25, and maybe some of the Pac-12 should. (Tara has said publicly Cal should be top 25). Message boards around the Pac-12 (or Pac-10 as Carolyn kept calling it) were lit up all day.

Subplot #2:
Nneka Ogwumike moved past Another Stanford fave, Jayne Appel, into third place all time scoring for Stanford. Ahead of her is Kate Starbird and another, nother C and R fave Candice Wiggins. Candice has 2,629 and Nneka has around 2,143or so, so not sure if she can pass her.

Subplot #3-Big Head Nneka:
When C and R sat down opposite the opposing team’s bench like we do every home game, quite a few fans had blown up photographs of Nneka. C instantly coveted one, as she does all things Stanford and all things free. She spied twitter buddy @SGC72 amidst them. Moving her thumbs quickly, C ascertained that SC had some extras and that C should come over at half time. The minutes couldn’t tick by fast enough.

At the half, SC introduced C to the Glue-Stick lady of section 4 (we didn’t ask permission to use her name, so she is now Glue-Stick lady, but she was very, very nice). She gave out the pictures for free and asked if C wanted hers glued to a piece of cardboard for waving, on the condition she wave it the rest of the half. Deal.

On the way back to her seat, C spotted the announcers (a rare televised game) with the camera pointed at them with the red light on so she snuck behind them and held up Big Head Nneka and said “vote for Nneka for Senior Class award.” Let me know if that made it out to TV land.

After the game, when NO victories balls were thrown our way, C and R gave the picture of Nneka to a young fan that sits behind us and just loooves Nneka. We made her night, just as ours was made. You know, pay it forward and all, C and R’s motto…

So next game is UCLA Sunday, which is a Play4Kay game, so wear pink for breast cancer awareness. Michelle Smith of Left Coast Hoops is of the opinion Stanford needs to remain undefeated in Pac-12 play to keep the number 4 seed, so come on out to root them on. Seems like Stanford is not playing just against one team, but against all of the East Coast bias.

Follow C and R Twitter and see if the get in a feud with Caroly Peck, too!

The Stanford Women’s Basketball team got another Pac-12 win over Arizona Saturday, in a game not televised in California. The final score was 91 to 51, Stanford, and the only suspense was whether Stanford could make it to 100. Considering they had 51 points at the half, it was totally doable!

Kudos to KSZU for broadcasting the game on live radio over the Internet, so C and R could follow, for the first half anyway. We had to turn them off at half time to go coach our little girls team, which is doing well since we got coaching advice from Tara VanDerveer, hee hee, but we digress.

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Once again, the sisters Ogwumike lead the way and saved the day. And once again a Pac-12 team holds the Stanford’s Women’s Basketball Team close well into the second half and then the sisters get untracked. This time Stanford’s victim was Arizona State, who the Cardinal will only see once this year, thanks to the new Pac-12 alignment. And C and R area betting once was enough for the Cardinal.

Coming into the game, Arizona State lead the Pac-12 in defense, meaning holding teams to around 52 points per game. Stanford came into the game leading the Pac-12 in offense. What was it, 80 some points per game? Something had to give.

Due to the magic of television, Bay Area fans actually got to see this game, so thanks Comcast Sports Net or whatever channel that broadcasted the game. And how is that Pac-12 channel coming along? No rush or anything.

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Finally, a well-hyped game that lived up to its promise!

C and R are, of course, talking about the Stanford-Cal women’s basketball game.

It featured freshmen vs. freshmen, a career high scoring and rebounding night for one player, tough rebounding, one team clawing back to force overtime and one Hall of Fame coach and one who executed a great game plan and put her team in position to win.

Of course, it’s easier to enjoy the game after the fact when your team wins, as Stanford did, beating Cal 74-71 in OT. Let’s get to the highlights (or low lights, in some cases).

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Kendra Suttles will be missing for the Cowgirls after starting the last two games for OSU.

Who: Kansas State Wildcats vs. Oklahoma State Cowgirls

What: The Wildcats come into the game riding a three game losing streak after dropping a trio of Big 12 games to Oklahoma, at Baylor and to Iowa State. The Cowgirls enter after taking their last two at Missouri and against Texas A&M this week. So either the streaks for both will live on with an OSU win or fortunes for both squads will be reversed with a K State victory.

Where: Gallagher-Iba Arena - Stillwater, Okla. | 11:30 a.m. CT | FSN

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And now, here is NorcalNick from Cal Golden Blogs with his answers to C and R's Q's:

(Oh, check out his blog with his questions about Cal-Stanford WBB and our answers plus Scott from Stanford's Rule of Tree. Very informative. and Rule of Tree did their own Q and A with Cal Golden Blogs. C and R are getting dizzy.)

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And now, in honor of the Big Game, C and R present the 158th annual Q & A with Nick from SB Nation's California Golden Blogs.

He asks the Q’s, C and R answer them. (Secretly, we think he just wants our Stanford blog to mention his Cal blog, hoping for bad karma or ju-ju or what have you, but I digress). Our questions to him are at the bottom, and we will publish tomorrow or whenever we get around to it.

One note, usually his questions are funny and silly, so that's how we wrote ours. Then he writes these scholarly and insightful questions, like he’s been studying basketball or something. Ours look stupid by comparison. Oh well, when have we ever let that stop us! Enjoy.

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You want an analysis of Stanford’s 65-47 win over Washington? Just dig up any article on their win Thursday over Washington State, rinse and repeat. Stanford started out slow in the first half, couldn’t get it inside to the dynamic duo of POY contender Nneka Ogwumike and her athletic sister Chiney, and couldn’t hit their outside shots (shooting just 23% from behind the line in the first half), and took a slight 27-20 lead into the locker room. Then half time came and Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer had a(n intense) talk with the team and they came out in the second half and hit threes to open up the middle and then Nneka took over inside. Another Pac-12 win for Stanford.

Well, there are some slightly different details. One, they couldn’t get it inside because of Washington’s Regina Rodgers. She is a big presence in the middle and very physical, often wrestling with Nneka for position. It was only when Rogers went to the bench with in the second half that Nneka could get untracked.

Let’s talk about Regina Rogers for a moment. She came in averaging over 16 points for Washington and is their best scorer. Stanford held her to 5 total points, mostly by one on one defense by Nneka and weak side help from others when Rogers touched the ball. But that’s not the point C and R want to talk about.

Let’s back up a bit. C and R missed the first half of this game (and quite a few other Stanford games this season) due to a conflict with the little girl’s team we coach. A commitment is a commitment. These middle school age girls play in the local rec league. They are not destined to play at Division I Stanford or probably play college basketball at any level. Most of these girls just play the sport in the winter, 8 weeks worth, and then forget about it. They are not year-round warriors or typical gym rats Six of the ten girls on our team do not play other sports at all. One girl has never played basketball before and we had to start with, first you dribble the ball when you move, you cannot keep running with the ball.

One of the girls who plays no other sports has a hard time catching the ball. She mentally is afraid of the ball, and that is tough to overcome. If she has never practiced it, and is fearful already, it makes sense she is behind some of the other girls. It is our jobs as coaches to put her in to a position to succeed. We tell our guards to dribble closer and bounce pass to our "centers" so the throw is not so high or scary coming at her head (she is tall and in that group, and this way we are not singling her out). We work on catching with her every practice. We have everyone take 5 minutes to throw the ball against the wall as hard as they can and the other partner has to catch it with both hands. You can try to make the partner miss, so we encourage them to make their throws hard and at an angle so the other partner has to move to catch it. Everyone loves this drill.

In our game on Saturday, several passes came her way and she fumbled the out of bounds. One of the parents on our team loudly and sharply criticized her with each missed opportunity, to the point he was ridiculing her. She is 12 yeas old. He was holding up a yardstick that we often use to measure pro players, and applying it to someone not even close to that level. And he was picking on someone who is much younger, in a sense, unable to defend herself. Self esteem for a budding middle school girl is still developing and it is crucial it not be smashed by a thoughtless parent shooting off his mouth. We have asked our head coach numerous times talk to him, but as you can imagine, to no avail.

So how does this apply to Stanford basketball? Glad you asked. When we first started this blog about 5 or 6 years ago, we also used the pro yardstick to measure Stanford players. We would criticize, why is she in the line up, she’s useless. OMG, did you see that air ball last night? She calls herself a basketball player? Harsh, indeed. Then we got to know the players as young women off the court. And we met their parents. When you shake a dad’s hand and look him in the eye and tell them how much you admire their daughter, it is really hard to point out every flaw and mistake and bad shot she made in the game last night. So we backed off on personal criticism about the player. Now, don’t get us wrong, C and R are not going all soft on ya. We still worry when Nneka, Chiney and a third player have seven-eighths of the points and everyone else has zeros, kinda like this game.(this time it was Nneka, Chiney and Taylor Greenfield with 44 of the 65 points). We have just made a conscious effort not to criticize personally or so harshly. I think it was Tara VanDerveer who said something like, "our job as coaches is to minimize players mistakes, and that’s the very nature of 18 to 22 year old girls but to make mistakes."

So back to the Stanford-Washington Game (finally, some of you are saying). Regina Rodgers is a big presence inside we reported. We mean, she is big. She is 6’3, and well, she is about 75 pounds overweight. All of it in her stomach. It limits her ability to move quickly up and down the court. How can someone play Division I basketball and be that out of shape? And are we using an unfair yardstick to even mention her weight as a factor? We have seen some players be a "little out of shape" meaning they have some extra pounds around the middle. And we have seem many different body shapes, some happen to be shorter and stockier the others, but this seems out of control. Would this be talked about if she were on the men’s team? Your thoughts, readers?

Anyway, back to the Washington game. In the second half, Stanford made an effort to hit threes to open up the middle. Freshmen Taylor Greenfield responded by hitting 3 three-pointers to spark a 17-3 rally. She would end up with 12 points for the game. Nneka scored most of her 17 points for the game in the time frame, and Chiney got 15 points and 11 rebounds for a double-double.

Really scary moment when Nneka got pushed out of bounds, crumpled to the ground and held her shin in obvious agony. The refs stopped play and sister Chiney was the first one back to help her up. Reading Nneka’s lips, she said plaintively, "she pushed me!" Quoted in the Stanford site, Nneka shed more light on the play, "I was pushed into a screen and kind of fell over someone’s leg. It T-boned my leg." She was subbed out around the 9-minute mark.

But here’s the thing (And we feel like we can criticize coach VanDerveer, she’s a grown-up), Stanford was up by 18 when Nneka went out limping. Taylor Greenfield promptly hit a three with her on the bench and Stanford was up by 21. Yet 2 minutes later, Nneka is reinserted back onto the line up. Why? Why risk losing your star player? She was obviously limping after each play. She did go on to score 8 more points to get to her 17. She finally was subbed out with about a minute left, and the lead was exactly at 20 again. C and R are surprised and confounded coach VanDerveer would risk her, and the season, that way.

Nneka did pass Nicole Powell for fifth on the Stanford all-time scoring list, and needs 5 more to take over 4th place. One might think Tara left in her for records, but watching Tara over the years, she usually does not care about the records, and coaches each game by inserting the best players to win the game (or rest some to give others experience.) Nneka usually averages about 29 minutes a game and is routinely rested in blowouts, when she could be kept into up her scoring average. So it’s strange she continued to play.

Hope she is better and not limping for next week’s home game against Cal.

Side notes:
Sarah Boothe did not dress for the game, we haven’t found out why yet. Freshmen guard Amber Orrrrange, recently inserted into the starting lineup, had a season-high 9 assists, 4 steals and 4 points.

PS I posted this Saturday, but due to operator error, it didn't take!
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According to a statement released by UConn Monday evening, Caroline Doty underwent a MRI to determine the severity of a knee injury sustained Saturday evening at Depaul University. The MRI revealed that her ACL and meniscus are unchanged. According to Connecticut's spokesperson, the injury was apparently sustained during warm ups and is classified as a bone bruise.

She will be held out of Wednesday's Big East contest at Syracuse but is expected to be able to return for Saturday's contest against University of South Florida.

It was a dark and stormy night… and the Stanford Women’s Basketball Team was out of sync, not even a mouse. Whoops, wait, wrong appropriated story fragment. But it was such a weird night for all and to all a good night.

Stanford beat visiting Pac-12 foe Washington State 75-41, and although they brought some rain with them, the "storm" they promised never really happened. And the storm on the court never happened, either. Yes, a win is a win, and numbers don’t lie. Here they are. Stanford extended their school-record home wining streak to 72 games. Stanford won their 64th straight conference game. Washington State has never beaten Stanford, a streak going back 53 games. Stanford held Washington State to 27% shooting in the first half, 30% for the game. Stanford went on a 16-2 run to close out the first half. Player of the year candidate Nneka Ogwumike scored 22 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in 29 minutes, for a double-double. Sister Chiney scored 19 and had 12 rebounds for a double-double, too.

But… halftime score was 31-20, and Stanford looked ragged for most of the first half. Nneka had only 2 points in the first 7 minutes when she sank 2 free throws, and Washington State had the lead until the 5 and a half minute mark in the first. When your star scorer, who you depend upon the most, only has 4 points in the first 10 minutes of basketball, you know something is not right. And when the Stanford Tree Mascot only has one eye, you really know something is not right in the State of Denmark and Maples.
Stanford could not get the ball inside to Nneka or Chiney, and our guards were having trouble dribble penetrating. And they missed18 of their first 24 shots in that time span, thank youStanford website for the stats.

And then the threes were not falling. Stanford was 4-20 for the night from behind the line. At one point, three-point specialist Bonnie Samuleson shot the ball three times in a row, and missed three times in a row. Of course that means we rebounded the ball after each miss and got it back out to her, but to miss so many wide-open shots is inexcusable.

It was a sloppy game for both teams. Washington had 18 turnovers and Stanford was close behind with 15. Still, Stanford came back from the dead in around the 6 and half-minute mark to go on the aforementioned 16-2 run. Toni Kokenis got a buzzer beater lay up to pad their halftime lead to 11.

In the second half, after a thorough discuss by Stanford had coach Tara VanDerveer we’re sure, they played better. Stanford opened the half on a 24-6 tear to give everyone some breathing room. Nneka had 9 points in the first 12 minutes of the half. Speaking of which, she became sixth on the all-time Stanford scoring chart tonight. She can pass others on Saturday. Another bright spot was the play of Jos Tinkle, getting another start and scoring 9 points and grabbing 8 rebounds.

Well, let’s hope Stanford comes out with more energy and intensity for Washington.

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