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Kate Paye as a Stanford player in the 1990s/Stanford photo
This preseason, the guards on the Stanford women's basketball team have been attending a new academic institution: point-guard college.
It has no campus, but it has become a center of higher learning. It was founded by Stanford assistant coach Kate Paye, who played both point guard and off guard for Stanford's 1995 Final Four team and is considered by Tara VanDerveer her best defensive player ever.
Before practices, the Cardinal guards have a meeting in a separate room orchestrated by Paye. Notebooks come out. Notes are taken. And the entire concept of playing point guard is studied.
Guard play will make or break this year's Cardinal team, which has the best frontcourt in the country but needs the playmaking and leadership from the backcourt to make it happen. JJ Hones, the projected starter at point guard, and Jeanette Pohlen, who assumed the point guard role in Hones absence last year, are the key students, but not the only ones.
"It's about what a point guard needs to do, how to lead, how a point guard should act on the floor and off the court," Pohlen said.
The responsibilities of a point guard are many, and most of them are not apparent to the public.
A special guest instructor lectured the class not too long ago when Stanford's former national player of the year Jennifer Azzi addressed the team.
"She was talking about how anybody can be a leader, and how you need to bring energy to the whole team and how anybody can do it," Pohlen said.
Azzi and Paye were the best examples of the intangibles brought by a guard, because both infused energy into the team by their mere presence.
Former Cardinal guard Angela Taylor, now general manager of the WNBA's Washington Mystics, also spoke to the "class."
So Pohlen and other guards take notes on what they learn and lug notebooks around before and after point-guard class, something they did not do last season.
Stanford center Jayne Appel does not know what goes on in those meetings, but she sees the notebooks the guards carry around and figures something good is happening.
How much they learn from these classes may determine whether Stanford wins a national championship.
Stanford's first exhibition game is Nov. 1 against Vanguard, and its first regular-season game is Nov. 14 at Old Dominion. All the Cardinal players except for Sarah Boothe (foot) and Hannah Dohagne (knee) are expected to play against Vanguard. Appel said she is nearly 100 percent healthy following offseason knee surgery. She takes part in all aspects of practice except for the running afterward, a time she and Hones spend on stationary bikes.
For more Bay Area college sports, see jakestakeonsports.com.
See also:
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PAC-10 PRESEASON PROGRESS REPORT, PART I
PAC-10 MEN'S, WOMEN'S RECRUITING UPDATE
MARK MADSEN TO COACH IN NBA'S DEVELOPMENTAL LEAGUE
NEW COMPETITION FOR STANFORD FOR RECRUIT
DAWKINS BATTLING AMAKER AGAIN FOR RECRUIT
STANFORD RECRUITING CLASS RANKED IN TOP 10
STANFORD CLASS RANKED IN TOP 15
STANFORD WOMEN PICKED TO WIN PAC-10
NATION'S NO. 1 PROSPECT TO VISIT STANFORD
GEORGIA PLAYER TRYING TO SCHEDULE TRP
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