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Stanford's best all-time women's basketball teams, No. 4
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Amy Tucker went 29-3 in her season as head coach/Photo by Kyle Terada
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The No. 4 team on our top-10 list of the all-time best Stanford’s women’s basketball teams reached its lofty ranking despite the absence of two prominent people: Tara VanDerveer and Kristin Folkl.
The 1996 Olympics caused VanDeveer and Folkl to take a year off from Stanford, VanDerveer as the U.S. Olympic coach and Folkl in an attempt to make the U.S. Olympic volleyball team (she fell just short, winding up as the first alternate).
But with longtime assistant Amy Tucker taking over for her first and only season as the Cardinal’s head coach, the 1995-96 team performed well enough to land at No. 4 on our list.
The top three Stanford teams will be revealed over the next few days, but now we turn to the Tucker team of 1996.
No. 4: 1995-96
Officially, Tucker was the head coach and Marianne Stanley was the co-head coach that season in an odd bit of title labeling. No matter, the two received several honors, including UPI’s national co-head coaches of the year after leading the Cardinal to a 29-3 record, a No. 3 final regular-season ranking and a berth in the Final Four.
In many ways this team set the table for the 1996-97 season, because none of the prominent players on the 1995-96 team were seniors. Kate Starbird was a junior who averaged 20.1 points and was named co-Pac-10 player of the year. Point guard Jamila Wideman, also a junior, was the other Cardinal member of the all-conference team, and sophomores Olympia Scott (10.3 points), Vanessa Nygaard (14.2 points, 7.0 rebounds) and Naomi Mulitauaopele (11.9 points, 5.5 rebounds) formed a formidable frontcourt, with Heather Owen in reserve.
Junior Charmin Smith was also a major contributor in the backcourt, especially after senior Bobbie Kelsey injured her knee after having played just 10 games. But the Cardinal did not have Folkl, who had been a big help to the team in her freshman season the previous year – albeit for just half a season, following volleyball.
The 1995-96 season got off to a lousy start with a nine-point road loss to unranked Massachusetts in the opener, and it appeared to absence of VanDerveer was going to be a significant factor. But the Cardinal bounced back to play at a high level thereafter.
The Cardinal beat No. 2 Tennessee by 18 points, and Stanford’s road loss to a Texas Tech team that would finish the regular season ranked No. 9 was the only other regular-season defeat besides the UMass upset. The Cardinal rolled through the Pac-10 season with an 18-0 record.
In the NCAA Tournament, the Cardinal advanced to the national semifinals by beating Auburn for the second time in the season before losing to No. 5-ranked Georgia. That was Tucker’s final game as a head coach before VanDerveer returned and Tucker went back to being an assistant coach – an assistant coach with a career .906 winning percentage as a Division I head coach.
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