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Stanford's No. 1 all-time best women's basketball team
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Jennifer Azzi (third from left) won the Wade and Naismith national player of the year awards in 1990/Photo: Business Wire
The selection of Stanford’s all-time best women’s basketball team probably comes as no surprise. The 1996-97 team, which came in at No. 2, was certainly talented, perhaps even more talented throughout the entire roster than the No. 1 team. But the 1989-90 team won a national championship and did it in convincing style. The starting five of the 1990 Cardinal, plus its freshman sixth man, all rank among the best Stanford players ever.
More than anything, the 1990 Cardinal team showed how far a program can come in a short period of time. Five years after going 13-15 in its first season under Tara VanDerveer, the Cardinal went 32-1 and won its first national title, fully deserving the title of best Stanford team ever.
No. 1: 1989-90
Surprisingly, the 1989-90 Cardinal was one of the few VanDerveer teams that did not win an outright Pac-10 title. In 15 of the past 21 seasons, Stanford finished alone in first place, but the 1990 Cardinal had to share the conference crown with Washington, which was also the only team to beat Stanford that season. Washington finished the regular season ranked No. 3 in 1990 and was a No. 1 seed in its region of the NCAA Tournament, so it just so happened the Pac-10 had two of the nation's best teams that season. Stanford beat the Huskies by 40 points in Palo Alto that season but lost 81-78 before a crowd of more than 7,700 loud Washington fans later that season in Seattle.
Four of the members of the Stanford starting five were all-conference in 1990 – Trisha Stevens, Katy Steding, Jennifer Azzi and Sonja Henning. They had all been starters on the 1988-89 team that got to the national semifinals. The only newcomer to the starting five was Julie Zeilstra, who would make the all-conference team the following season, and the one key addition to the roster was Val Whiting, who was Pac-10 freshman of the year that season. Two of the key players on that team – Azzi and Whiting – were named to our five-player, all-time Stanford first team we selected last month. Three others – Henning, Stevens and Steding – were named to the second team. It means five of the top 10 Stanford players ever (by our estimation) were on that 1990 team.
Azzi was the star on this team of stars. She won virtually every national player of the year award, even though she was not the team’s leading scorer that season. She was not even the Cardinal’s No. 2 scorer. Stevens led the teams at 17.6 points per game, Steding was second at 16.9, Azzi third at 14.7, Zeilstra fourth at at 13.8 and Whiting fifth at 12.4. When your No. 5 scorer is averaging better than 12 points a game, the team is something special. It was, quite simply, one of the best offensive teams in women’s college basketball history. As a team the 1990 Cardinal made 50.1 percent of its shots and its 92.8 scoring average is the 6th best single-season average in Division I history. The team scored over 100 points 10 times that season.
That Stanford team was so good because it worked so well together. It averaged 23.0 assists per game, the third best single-season average in Division I history. Stanford had the top two Pac-10 players in assists that season – Henning (6.7) and Azzi (6.0), the top two in the conference in three-point percentage – Steding (46.4) and Azzi (44.2), and the top two in the Pac-10 in field-goal percentage – Stevens (54.9) and Whiting (54.7). It had no one in the top two in scoring, though.
Stanford showed how good it was when it beat No. 2 Tennessee by 14 points early in the season. It then beat Washington, then ranked No. 7, at home by 40 points and No. 6 Long Beach State by 14. The lone setback came at Washington. The Cardinal fought back from a 10-point deficit to tie the game with two minutes left, but fell just short at the end.
But the Cardinal buried the competition in the NCAA Tournament, beating No. 16-ranked Hawaii by 30, No. 24 Mississippi by 13, No. 22 Arkansas by 27 and No 12 Virginia by nine to get to the championship game against No. 9 Auburn. Auburn had already beaten two No. 1 seeds, Washington and previously unbeaten and No. 1-ranked Louisiana Tech, to get to the title game, but Stanford took care of the Tigers in front of a crowd of 16,595 in Knoxville, Tenn.
Stanford won the title game in typical Stanford fashion, with balanced scoring that featured four players scoring between 16 and 21 points. The leading scorer was Henning, with 21 points, even though she was sixth on the team in scoring average that season. Azzi had 17 points and five assists and led a surge that decided the game. Her lead pass to Zeilstra for a layup, followed by her 16-foot shot and her three-pointer during a short span early in the second half put the Cardinal safely ahead in what ended up as an 88-81 Cardinal win. Azzi was named Final Four MVP at a site just a half hour from her hometown of Oak Ridge, Tenn. The team had pizza at the Azzis’ house after the game.
See video clip of 1990 title game here.
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