Stanford Women Surprising Themselves

Finally, Pacific 10 rivals hoped, there might be a crack, a blip, maybe even a collapse of the Stanford women’s basketball juggernaut.

Hardly.

In the home stretch of a season even Stanford partisans had fretted about, the Cardinal rides an 11-game win streak going into its game against UCLA today, 17-2 overall and 10-0 in the Pac-10 and ranked fourth in the nation.

Even with its head coach gone for a year, losing four of its first six players from last season’s Final Four team and losing a key player for the season in January, the Stanford women roll on.

Stanford learned more than a year ago that Coach Tara VanDerveer would be named coach of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.

Great gig for VanDerveer, but troublesome for Stanford.

USA Basketball requires the coach of its women’s Olympic team to be on the job a full year, meaning VanDerveer had to resign at Stanford, then be rehired after the Olympics.

Her longtime assistant, Amy Tucker, was promoted to interim coach for this season, and former USC coach Marianne Stanley was named co-head coach.

Friday night’s game marked Stanley’s first professional visit to USC since she chose not to renew her contract with USC in 1993. She has a gender bias suit pending against the school. In the 1990s, Stanford has reached the Final Four more than any other school--four times--and the final 16 the last eight years. Twice, in 1990 and ‘92, Stanford won the NCAA championship.

The Cardinal has won 45 of its last 49 games. Since 1987, Stanford’s worst season was 25-6.

Kate Starbird, a 6-foot-2 junior who averaged 32 points in the Pac-10 season’s first four games, is the current team leader.

A slashing player who can also shoot from long range, Starbird had to be coaxed to shoot. After a season-opening loss at Massachusetts in which Starbird took five shots, Tucker took her aside.

“Kate, we want you to take 20 shots a game,” she told her.

Still the reluctant gunner, she averages 15.7 shots per game, but is averaging 20.2 points.

Some say junior point guard Jamila Wideman might be Stanford’s most valuable player. She’s averaging five assists and almost three steals.

“Wideman is to us what John Stockton is to the Utah Jazz,” Stanley said. “She’s a tremendous point guard. Without her, we could be a .500 team.”

Wideman and Starbird are a great pairing.

“Having Kate on the floor . . . she’s a great weapon for a point guard, she can run and she handles the ball as well as I do,” Wideman said.

Wideman is coming off nearly two lost years. She injured her left foot in her freshman year and it hadn’t fully healed even by last summer.

Not even the season-ending loss of senior Bobbie Kelsey to knee surgery has slowed Stanford.

The Cardinal lost three senior starters from last season, plus sensational freshman Kristin Folkl, who is off for a year, trying out for the U.S. Olympic volleyball team.

The Stanford women have a three-game lead in the Pac-10 with nine to play.

“Honestly, I’m surprised we’re up three,” Tucker said. “Everyone below us is beating up on each other.”