Well, it doesn’t take Stanford Women’s Basketball Head coach Tara VanDerveer long to "fix" what is wrong with her team. After winning "only" by 18 against Arizona State, Stanford beat Arizona 91-61 and more importantly, got back to playing Stanford basketball. What is Stanford basketball? Well, it’s rebounding on both ends, taking care of the basketball and working it inside as well as hitting threes and just smart, smart play befitting a number three ranked team. Right now, Stanford is hard to stop because they do have a good inside game and an accurate outside game. Most teams feel lucky just to have the one aspect on offense, and Stanford has the two. If you shut one down, or if Stanford is struggling with one aspect of their game, the other takes over (hopefully).

This time it rained threes in the desert. Jeanette Pohlen made five three pointers and Lindy LaRocque made four. Add to that the stat that all five starters were in double figures with eight players having at least one assist and that is a well–balanced team.

Stanford also tied their own PAC-10 record by winning 48 PAC-10 games in a row. Come out and see them make history on Thursday against Washington State.

Sorry C and R don’t have more to report, as we couldn’t stomach another game followed on Gametracker (And the game was not televised, on TV or internet anywhere) and the call of the incredibly warm Northern California weather on Saturday was too much. But our number one fan (N1F) was brave enough to soldier the cold, cold weather of Arizona (hee hee!) and filed this report exclusive to C and R:

The weather was crazy cold when we got here Thursday, but has warmed up quite a bit by Saturday (in the low 60s).  Not quite the warm weather vacation we had planned in December, but, oh well.

It was Arizona’s pink day and they had cute pink warm up shirts that said "Love" with a ribbon for the V.  We had cute pink warm up shirts too and pink shoelaces.   (Awww, C and R wished we could have seen that!)

There was a pretty good size Stanford section and a total crowd of just over two thousand. The local fans near us were enthusiastic and very nice, cheering all promising signs from the Wildcats, but also cheering great moves by Stanford. (C and R love hearing the other team’s fans were classy).

We played well, much improved from Thursday's Arizona State game. The threes were falling!!  And we were so happy to see Lindy hitting her shot. Jeanette had a great game (!!!), Nneka was a monster on the boards, Toni looked good in the second half and hit a three. Everyone but Mel got to play (and we think that was simply because Mel had so many minutes on Thursday and is recovering). Gracie Mashore hit a three and a layup (we are especially fond of Gracie). Sarah Boothe did a good job, all in all it was a good game, though not much of a challenge.

Cheers – N1F

More Stanford offensive and defense at the original C and R's Stanford Women's Basketball Blog