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Stanford vs. Washington Round II

R comes to C’s house so they can get the Stanford Women’s Basketball game vs. Washington on C's computer and watch the opening ceremony of the Olympics on C's fancy HD TV. R has the fancy phone, C has the fancy TV, call it even. The Stanford game is set for 7 PM, and the opening ceremony is advertised to begin at 7:30 PM.

We dial up Gametracker and the entire site goes down for the first few minutes. Then we discover from 7:30 – 9:00 PM the network is just showing fluff and filler on the Olympics and the real opening ceremony starts at 9 PM. Bummer. Then Gametracker goes down again.
The Olympic coverage does start out with the somber news that luger Nodar Kumaritashvili from the country of Georgia had crashed during his training run and died of his injuries. We are very saddened by the news.

We get Gametracker back up and discover Nneka is on fire, again. Stanford Sophomore Nneka Ogwumike has scored 6 of the 8 points in the first 6 minutes. She always starts out the game hot. Then she fouls and goes to the bench and for some reason, we do not see her again for the rest of the half. C and R always wonder what head coach Tara VanDerveer is thinking by sitting down your best and most creative scorer, and for the rest of the game? But then we are always questioning Tara and she has 2 National Championships and 17 PAC-10 titles and counting and we have none so needless to say she doesn’t need to listen to us.

It’s hard to get a feel for the game reading off a play-by-play, and the half ends with Stanford only scoring 28. That should be bad news for Stanford, but Washington only has 12 points for the half. Twelve points? Come on PAC-10! USC only mustered 10 points at half against Stanford on February 7th of this year. Washington only made 4 of 31 shots in the first half. Now, we love Stanford and all to an obsessive point, but we don’t think they play such stifling defense that teams cannot get to 15 or more points in a half. Heck, we don’t even utilize a full court press! Make a shot!

With Nneka on the bench Jayne saves the day. Senior Jayne Appel ended with 18 points and 13 rebounds in the game, 12 of those rebounds coming in the first half. We win 58-36. Nneka would finish with "only" 12 points, well below her 19 points a game average but still great, as she single-handedly tied Washington’s first half output. As C and R have said before, the only person who can stop Nneka from scoring is Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer. See, if Tara benches her… she can’t score…oh, if we have to explain it, it just isn’t funny…what, you got the joke but thought it wasn’t funny anyway? Them’s fightin’ words…wait, R is tapping me on the shoulder and telling me to knock it off.

So after the Stanford game and the slog of the parade of nations, the opening ceremony from Vancouver was pretty creative and clever. C really liked the use of lights and projection on the floor and on the sheets of fabric in the sky to create magical places. Too bad the fourth pillar of the Olympic flame cauldron got stuck and they had to do with an impromptu tri-pod. Should be a fun Olympics if the snow shows up.

See you at Washington State this Sunday on Candice Wiggins’ birthday, otherwise known as Valentine’s Day.

Get more Stanford Women's Basketball info at C and R's Stanford Women's Basketball Blog