Stanford is holding Arizona again for the primary ever NCAA girls’s basketball championship since 1992
SAN ANTONIO – After waiting 29 years, the Stanford women’s basketball team had to sweat under pressure for 6.1 seconds to win their third national championship.
The Cardinal got it and held Arizona back 54-53 when Star Guard Aari McDonald missed a shot just before the buzzer. Coach Tara VanDerveer couldn’t breathe out until that moment. Stanford, number 1 in the NCAA women’s basketball tournament, leaves the Alamodome as a champion but Arizona as an underdog that caught the imagination of the country and nearly won the program’s first NCAA title.
It was by no means a masterpiece as both teams fought for a goal and missed easy layups and shots, but Stanford did just enough to take the win.
“We look forward to winning the COVID championship,” said VanDerveer. “ The other wasn’t quite so close, the last. But we’re really excited. Nobody knows the score, nobody knows who scored, it’s a national championship. “
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Haley Jones scored 17 points to lead the cardinal and was honored as the most outstanding player of the tournament.
“I only owe everything to my teammates, they have faith in me when I don’t have faith in myself,” said Jones.
VanDerveer and Stanford last won everything in 1992. The 29-year gap between NCAA titles is the longest for any Division I coach in any sport.
Stanford took the lead 12-3 on Sunday, forcing Arizona to take a break. The Cardinal led 16-8 after the first quarter. The Wildcats, who had lost their two regular season games to Stanford with 27 and 14 points, returned and briefly took the lead in the second quarter, but Stanford rose during the break between 31 and 24.
The rest of the game was close as Arizona repeatedly forced Stanford sales and refused to step down. The Wildcats only shot 28.8% off the field but still brought the game to the buzzer. McDonald finished a brilliant tournament with 22 points but was 5v20 off the field. Her competitive shot from the tip of the key to the buzzer ricocheted off the edge.
“I was rejected hard. I tried to turn the corner, they sent three on me. I took a hard, competitive shot and it didn’t fall,” said McDonald.
The Wildcats tried to become just the fourth team to win a championship after falling behind double digits.
It’s been quite a journey for VanDerveer and the Cardinal. The team was out and about in Santa Clara County for nearly 10 weeks due to COVID-19 regulations and stayed in hotels for 86 days during that nomadic season. It prepared the cardinal for the final three weeks in the NCAA tournament bubble in San Antonio.
“It’s been a long, very difficult journey, being on the go, sleeping in hotels, living out of your pocket. It’s just a lot. You’re on the bus, you’re on planes all the time, and there just never really is one End in sight so it’s difficult, “said Jones. “But I think from that experience and the loss on the road and dropping one at home, I think it really has become something of a chip on our shoulders.”
On the way there, the Hall of Fame trainer scored her 1,099. Career victory to overtake Pat Summitt for almost all time in women’s basketball history.
Now the 67-year-old coach has a third national title alongside the championships she won in 1990 and 1992. So she was behind UConn’s Geno Auriemma and Summitt in third place all-time with Baylor’s Kim Mulkey.
Most championships of head coach DI women’s basketball
| Trainer | team | title |
|---|---|---|
| Geno Auriemma | UConn | 11 |
| Pat Summitt | Tennessee | 8th |
| Tara VanDerveer | Stanford | 3rd |
| Kim Mulkey | Baylor | 3rd |
Auriemma’s Huskies defeated Stanford when the Cardinal last made the NCAA title game in 2010. He has 11 national championships and is second in career wins after VanDerveer.
“It’s really amazing when you think about how you will be able to win a championship in four decades,” Auriemma said recently of VanDerveer. “Her consistency is remarkable and I admire how well she handled everything that goes with it.”
No other Division I coach has spent more than 20 years between titles. In basketball, the longest gap was 17 years for both women (Muffet McGraw, 2001 and 2018 at Notre Dame) and men (Rick Pitino, 1996 in Kentucky and 2013 in Louisville, although that title was later vacated).
Stanford went to the first NCAA tournament in 1982 under coach Dottie McCrae. VanDerveer took over the Cardinal for the 1985/86 season and made their first NCAA tournament in 1988. Since then, Stanford has made the NCAA field every year.
Stanford went to the Women’s Final Four in 1990 (won), ’91 and ’92 (won). But between that final title and the championship on Sunday, the cardinal had ten more trips to the Final Four, all of which ended without the trophy.
These included semi-final losses in 1995, 1996, and 1997, despite VanDerveer not being on the 1996 team because they were away to coach the U.S. national team in preparation for the 1996 Olympics. This Olympic team started a series of six gold medals in a row for the US women who left for the postponed Tokyo Games this summer. The success of the Americans also contributed to the start of two US pro leagues. Of both of them, the WNBA held and celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2021.
On Sunday, teams from the same conference met for the seventh time in the women’s championship game. VanDerveer is now 65-11 against Arizona.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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