Culture
From Idaho to iconic titles: Top 10 Tara VanDerveer moments as Stanford coach nears all-time wins record
It’s impossible to tell the story of the past four decades of college basketball without Tara VanDerveer. The Stanford icon, USA Basketball coach, and overall standard-bearer for West Coast basketball is an integral character in the growth of the women’s game since Title IX. And with two more wins, VanDerveer will stand alone as the winningest coach in college, men’s or women’s, passing former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski.
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In anticipation of her potential record-breaking win this weekend, we will publish stories this week that focus on her esteemed career. Here is a look back at some of VanDerveer’s monumental victories:
1. Win No. 1
Dec. 1, 1978: Idaho 70, Northern Montana 68 (OT)
Before win No. 1,201 there was win No. 1. As the head coach of Idaho, VanDerveer faced Northern Montana College (now known as Montana State-Northern) in her opening game. It was the program’s fifth season of existence — the Vandals didn’t even belong to a conference yet — and they had tapped a 25-year-old who had been an Ohio State assistant for two seasons to lead them.
Idaho was up with one possession to play, but the Vandals committed a foul and went to overtime, where they edged out the Polar Bears by two. As VanDerveer told the Stanford Daily in 2020, “Before we went into overtime, we were up three and there’s like 10 seconds left in the game or something. I said, ‘OK you guys look, we got this game, just don’t foul.’ We went out, the girl hit the shot, and we fouled her and I said, ‘This is going to be hard.’ I’m thinking, ‘Boy, this coaching thing is not going to be easy.’”
Tara VanDerveer –
Winningest Coach in Women’s College Basketball
1978-80 Idaho Women’s Basketball Head Coach
3 NCAA Championships
4 NCAA Final Four Appearances
16 NCAA Tournament AppearancesTara is our first 50 for 50 honoree this week as we celebrate 50 years of #TitleIX pic.twitter.com/GeeQ8oLS7a
— Idaho Vandals (@Idaho_Vandals) March 8, 2023
2. Sellout crowd, momentous win in Iowa
Feb. 3, 1985: Ohio State 56, Iowa 47
After two seasons at Idaho, including a 25-6 record in Year 2, VanDerveer returned to Columbus as the head coach. She led the Buckeyes to the inaugural NCAA Tournament in 1982 and returned to the Big Dance in 1984, when they landed in the AP Top 25 for the first time in her tenure.
En route to a fourth straight Big Ten title, Ohio State played at Iowa — then coached by C. Vivian Stringer — near the end of conference play. In what would become a precursor for record-breaking crowds in the state decades later, the teams played in front of 22,157 people at Carver-Hawkeye Arena. That obliterated the previous attendance record for an NCAA women’s basketball game of 10,622 set two years earlier. Team officials originally listed the attendance at 18,500, reportedly to avoid trouble with the fire marshals because the arena’s capacity was 15,450; fans even had to stand in the aisles during the game.
3. Signing a game-changer
1986: Stanford signs Jennifer Azzi
VanDerveer returned to the West after five seasons with the Buckeyes to helm a Stanford team that had gone 9-19 the season before. Her first item of business was to recruit Jennifer Azzi, a point guard from Oak Ridge, Tenn. The Cardinal had been so bad that VanDerveer told Sports Illustrated she didn’t let Azzi watch any practices or game film during her recruitment, but Stanford’s academic pedigree helped convince Azzi to follow her to the Pacific coast and become the program’s first true star.
T » B » T #GoStanford pic.twitter.com/ZolRKZn5kl
— Stanford WBB 🤓🏀 (@StanfordWBB) March 17, 2016
Azzi helped lead the Cardinal to the NCAA Tournament in 1988 as a sophomore, starting a streak of appearances that continues to this day. She was the Pac-10 player of the year as a junior when Stanford made the Elite Eight and then the national player of the year in 1990 when the Cardinal won their first national championship. Azzi remains the program’s all-time leader in 3-point percentage, ranks second in total assists and places third in steals. The line of greats that have come through Palo Alto, including Sonja Henning, Val Whiting, Kate Starbird, Candice Wiggins, Nneka and Chiney Ogwumike, leading up to Cameron Brink begins with Azzi. She was VanDerveer’s biggest off-court win.
4. Reaching the pinnacle
April 4, 1990: Stanford 88, Auburn 80
VanDerveer won her first national championship at Tennessee’s Thompson-Boling Arena, 20 minutes away from where Azzi played high school basketball. The Cardinal were fairly dominant throughout the tournament, winning their five games by an average of 15 points. The title game was more back-and-forth, as they went up by 11 early, then trailed by 11 later in the first half. It took a superlative shooting performance from Katy Steding, who hit six 3-pointers to defeat Auburn, sending the Tigers to their third-straight defeat in the championship game.
In her 12th season as a head coach, VanDerveer had reached the pinnacle and established Stanford as a national powerhouse, only the sixth team to ever win an NCAA title. Oddly enough, the Cardinal never earned a No. 1 AP poll ranking during the season, but that would come soon enough. Even though Azzi was graduating, Henning and Whiting remained to carry the torch.
5. Becoming an icon
April 5, 1992: Stanford 78, Western Kentucky 62
One title put VanDerveer on the map. Two titles made her an icon. In the 30-plus years since this game, only four more programs have won multiple championships (UConn, Notre Dame, Baylor and South Carolina), and those teams’ coaches have become legends in their own right.
The 1992 season was the third consecutive Final Four trip for the Cardinal, but they had to replace three starters from the previous season. Even so, they went 30-3 and dominated Western Kentucky in the final, led by freshman Rachel Hemmer’s 18 points and 15 rebounds. Their toughest matchup came in the Final Four when they held on 66-65 against Dawn Staley and Virginia.
6. Taking down Tennessee
Dec. 15, 1996: Stanford 82, Tennessee 65
VanDerveer took the 1995-1996 season off to coach Team USA leading up to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, and the program continued to thrive in her absence. The combination of Marianne Stanley and Amy Tucker led Stanford to an undefeated Pac-10 record and another trip to the Final Four. Still, VanDerveer’s return resulted in another milestone.
The Lady Vols had won the national title the previous season — what would end up being the first of a three-peat — and four total championships in the past decade. They were the gold standard of the sport under Pat Summitt, and Stanford had yet to beat them on their home court in Thompson-Boling Arena, including a 36-point defeat in Knoxville two years prior. Not this time. The Cardinal went in as the nation’s No. 1 team and took care of No. 5 Tennessee. Starbird was the team’s high scorer with 26 points, outdueling Tamika Catchings, who had 24 on 11-of-28 shooting. The teams both made the Final Four that year, but Stanford lost in the semifinal before a potential rematch in the title game.
This was a short-lived peak for the Cardinal, who wouldn’t win at Tennessee again until 2012 despite playing there every other year.
VanDerveer found the formula for consistency in the 2008 season. (Matt Marriott / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
7. Ending a drought
March 31, 2008: Stanford 98, Maryland 87
VanDerveer and Stanford entered this tournament after a 10-season Final Four drought. The Cardinal had won or tied for the PAC-10 title in eight of those years, but they weren’t experiencing the NCAA Tournament success to which they had grown accustomed. The drought finally ended in 2008, as the Candice Wiggins-led squad broke through against Maryland. Wiggins scored 41 points in the win, making it to the national semifinals as a senior after two previous losses in the Elite Eight. This was a return to the mountaintop for VanDerveer, as Stanford would advance to the Final Four each of the next four seasons.
8. UConn streak-busters
Dec. 30, 2010: Stanford 71, Connecticut 59
Connecticut came into Maples Pavilion having won 90 games in a row, including two national championships. Stanford emphatically put an end to what was then the longest winning streak in NCAA history. Point guard Jeanette Pohlen had 31 points and six assists as the Cardinal exacted minor revenge for losing in the 2010 national championship. They ended up bookending UConn’s streak, having handed the Huskies their most recent loss in the 2008 Final Four.
9. T-Dawg wins again
Dec. 16, 2020: Stanford 104, Pacific 61
VanDerveer became the winningest coach in women’s college basketball history, passing Summitt with her 1,099th win, all but 176 coming at Stanford. The pandemic meant no fans were in attendance for her milestone, but the players presented VanDerveer with a swim jacket that read “T-Dawg” after the final buzzer to mark the occasion. Cameron Brink, who was a freshman on that roster, told The Athletic that the Cardinal have something “funny” planned for the upcoming record.
VanDerveer holds the trophy after beating Arizona for another national championship. (Kirby Lee / USA TODAY Sports)
10. Reaching elite status
April 4, 2021: Stanford 54, Arizona 53
More than three decades after winning her first national championship, VanDerveer collected her third, joining a list that includes only Summitt, Geno Auriemma and Kim Mulkey. This one had the extra significance of featuring another PAC-12 team (Arizona) in the title game. After years of carrying the conference on their back, the Cardinal had some West Coast company in the final weekend and final game of the season.
(Top photo of Tara VanDerveer: Jack Dempsey / NCAA Photos via Getty Images)
Where do you turn when you need advice? A chatbot? A life coach? A wise and trusted friend?
How about a poet? Poets may not be famous for making the best life choices, but because they subject the mess of human existence to the discipline of language, they can be as helpful as any therapist or mentor.
Good poets know the rules and when to break them, which is something they can teach the rest of us.
To wit:
Giving advice is a peculiar literary undertaking. It flourishes in certain popular genres — graduation speeches, newspaper columns, country and western songs and poems like this one — but what, in these contexts, is it really for?
I’m thinking of situations when you don’t urgently need help but nonetheless enjoy reading answers to questions you may not have thought to ask. What interests you isn’t the content of the advice — you could get all the life hacks you want from A.I. — so much as the voice of the person dispensing it.
Wendy Cope is an English poet, born in 1945, who has been a fixture of her country’s literary scene since the 1980s. More recently, her short, buoyant poem “The Orange” has been widely memed online, bringing her to the attention of new readers beyond Britain.
Cope favors rhyme, meter, brisk jokes and tart aperçus. She addresses romance, friendship and the petty absurdities of modern life with disarming good humor. The last line of “The Orange” is “I love you. I’m glad I exist.” Somehow she makes it the opposite of cringe.
This isn’t the kind of poetry you would describe as “confessional.” And yet …
Question 1/7
Stop, if the car is going “clunk”
Or if the sun has made you blind.
Don’t answer e–mails when you’re drunk.
Tap a word above to fill in the highlighted blank.Want to learn this poem by heart? We’ll help.
Fill in the missing words below. You can always refer to the reading by A.O. Scott and full
text above.Let’s start with the first stanza.
A strong sense of place can deeply influence a story, and in some cases, the setting can even feel like a character itself. This week’s literary geography quiz highlights places where authors were born (or lived) that later became locations in their books. To play, just make your selection in the multiple-choice list and the correct answer will be revealed. At the end of the quiz, you’ll find links to the works if you’d like to do further reading.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries, by Eddie S. Glaude Jr.
For those of us in the national memory-keeping business, anniversaries hold near-totemic power. Satisfyingly round units of time, ideally bearing fancy, Latin-derived names, serve as the overburdened pegs on which to hang think pieces and museum exhibits, revisionist documentaries and maudlin public ceremonies. The arbitrary nature of such occasions is precisely what gives them their charge, inviting us to set aside complacency and submit to a comprehensive check-in.
In his new book, “America, U.S.A.,” Eddie S. Glaude Jr. presents an intriguing variation on the genre, seeing the country’s 250th birthday as an anniversary of anniversaries: 50 years since the malaise-ridden, schlock-heavy Bicentennial. A century since the subdued Prohibition-era Sesquicentennial. A century and a half since telegraphed reports of George Armstrong Custer’s defeat by the Lakota and Cheyenne at Little Bighorn rudely interrupted the Gilded Age Republic’s 100th birthday party.
If an anniversary offers a snapshot of a moment, the core of Glaude’s book is an old-timey photo album, a collection of notable episodes from earlier national reckonings, long-ago glances in the mirror. An estimable scholar of Black history, politics and religion at Princeton — best known for “Begin Again,” his 2020 meditation on James Baldwin’s relevance for our times — Glaude focuses, as his subtitle puts it, on “how race shadows the nation’s anniversaries.”
Such celebrations, he contends, have never really been the moments for honest self-reflection they are often advertised to be. Instead, the nation usually shatters the mirror, refusing to accept what it prefers not to see. “American anniversaries are often moments to turn a blind eye to the evils of the past and the present,” Glaude writes, “to suppress the fact of America’s divided soul.”
It’s a clever concept, and, needless to say, perfectly timed. Last year, Glaude notes, the Trump administration executed a hostile takeover of the government’s studiously bipartisan 250th anniversary planning. It is now preparing a program that is certain to conceal more than it reveals about the country ostensibly being celebrated.
Glaude, in no mood for celebration, argues that such omissions and evasions also defined commemorations in the past. In 1875, Frederick Douglass predicted “one grand Centennial hosannah of peace and good will to all the white race of this country.” He was right: The nation reached 100 years old at a crucial moment in the post-Civil War fight over racial equality, with white Northerners ready to give up on Southern Reconstruction. The occasion would help the once-warring sections to reunite around a shared commitment to white supremacy. On May 10, 1876, at the opening of the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the police tried to bar Douglass from the grandstand, until a white politician vouched for him.
The 150th anniversary came soon after a resurgent Ku Klux Klan successfully pushed for a restrictive immigration law aimed at keeping America a “Nordic” nation. At the lavishly funded, lightly attended celebrations in Philadelphia, Black veterans of World War I were excluded from marching in the opening parade. A writer with The Associated Negro Press wondered “what was in the breast of those black men who fought to make America safe for Democracy and on Monday stood on the sidelines, forgotten, as the Nordic strode by in all his vain pride.”
By 1976, when the nation marked its Bicentennial, the violence of the ’60s had destroyed any semblance of consensus. Vietnam and Watergate had eroded trust in the government. The commission initially tasked with organizing the anniversary was disbanded amid reports of corruption. Corporations filled the vacuum, Glaude explains, with “star-spangled whoopee cushions; patriotic toilet seats; Liberty hamburgers; red, white and blue beer cans.” The author, around 8 years old at the time, dimly remembers donning a pair of tricolor trousers.
A half-century later, Glaude is refreshingly honest about the depths of his despair. “I do not love America, and never have, especially now,” he writes in one of the more startling opening sentences I’ve read in some time. He dismisses this year’s Semiquincentennial as reaching back “to a storybook America that requires either the banishment of Black people from view or the reduction of our role in the country’s history, so as to affirm America’s ongoing quest to be a more perfect union.”
Undoubtedly true. But Trump doesn’t own the country, at least not yet, nor the 250th anniversary of one of the most radically liberatory and confusingly contradictory events in world history — an inspiration, as Glaude shows, even to critical observers of the American experiment, like Douglass. Far from the revanchist MAGA-palooza in Washington, I suspect this summer’s unasked-for invitation to national soul-searching may surprise us yet.
Despite his despair, Glaude concludes that “the past still offers resources for us to freedom-dream.” So, too, does this book.
AMERICA, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries | By Eddie S. Glaude Jr. | Crown | 270 pp. | $31
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