Sports often exhibits poetic justice, and it crops up again with the fact that Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer is likely to get his 800th career coaching win on Wednesday at the expense of a person who had a lot do with VanDerveer getting the first 799.
The Cardinal (6-2) will be heavily favored in its 6:30 p.m. game at San Francisco, which is coached by former Cardinal star Jennifer Azzi. USF has lost six in a row, and Stanford comes in on a two-game losing streak and is fortunate to still be ranked in the top 10.
It is a sign of the reputation Stanford’s women’s basketball has built over the years that it is ranked No. 8 in both the Associated Press and coaches polls this week.
And Stanford is still ranked ahead of Pac-10 foe UCLA, which, at No. 9, probably deserves to be ranked ahead of the Cardinal. The Bruins, after all, are unbeaten and own a road victory over Notre Dame, which was ranked No. 12 at the time and is still ranked No. 18, while Stanford has losses against the only two ranked teams it has faced, DePaul and Tennesse, the latter in overtime – and one of those losses was by 20 points to a DePaul team ranked No. 16.
Rankings matter little at this point, of course. Stanford’s goal is to put on a good performance against USF in preparation for the two games after that – a Dec. 28 home game against No. 4 and undefeated Xavier and a Dec. 30 home game against No. 1 and undefeated Connecticut.
The Dons should offer little resistance. They were 5-27 last year and are 2-9 this season, with six of their losses coming by more than 20 points. The Dons get some exposure by hosting Stanford, something that probably would not have occurred without the VanDerveer-Azzi relationship.
Azzi faces a major challenge in her first season as a head coach, and what Jennifer Azzi needs is a Jennifer Azzi.
Stanford and VanDerveer were in much the same situation USF is in now back in 1985. That’s when VanDerveer took over a Cardinal program that had been 5-23 and 9-19 the previous two seasons. Stanford went just 13-15 that first season, but it was during that season that Stanford signed Azzi, an athletic guard from Oak Ridge, Tenn., who was the kind of recruit Stanford did not figure to get at its stage of development.
With Azzi as the leader, Stanford’s program skyrocketed, earning a national title in 1990, when Azzi was named national player of the year. The reputation built by Azzi and her teammates helped to lift the program to its status as a perennial national powerhouse.
Azzi needs that kind of recruiting coup to get USF heading in the right direction.
But on Wednesday, Azzi is likely to be the victim of VanDerveer’s 800th coaching victory, making her the sixth women’s basketball coach to reach that figure. It will leave VanDerveer a mere 798 wins ahead of Azzi.
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