FARM REPORT SPORTS
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MEN'S BASKETBALL They Had a Shot, and Just About Made ItBY MOST MEASURES, it was a very good season. Thirty-one wins, a third straight Pac-10 championship, a first-team All-American (sophomore Casey Jacobsen) and impressive victories over two Final Four teams--unfortunately, not in the Final Four. For the second consecutive year, Stanford was the nation's top-ranked team for virtually all of January and February, and there was even some talk in the press midway through the season about the Cardinal going undefeated, something no team has done since the Indiana Hoosiers in 1975-76. As things turned out, it wasn't all that far-fetched. Both of the team's regular-season losses, to UCLA and Arizona, could easily have gone Stanford's way. A No. 1 seed in the West region of the NCAA tournament, the Cardinal handily dispatched its first-round opponent, North Carolina-Greensboro, 89-60. In the second round, scrappy St. Joseph's, led by a 37-point effort from guard Marvin O'Connor, frayed Stanford fans' nerves but eventually submitted, 90-83. And in the regional semifinal, a bruising Cincinnati squad took Stanford to the limit before falling, 78-65. That left the Cardinal just one game away from the Final Four. The last time the Cardinal advanced so far in the tournament, in 1998, Arthur Lee, '99, and Mark Madsen, '00, rallied Stanford from a six-point deficit in the final minute to defeat Rhode Island, 79-77. As breathtaking as that victory was, the opponent was not nearly as talented as the one Stanford faced in the regional final this year. The Maryland Terrapins, a No. 3 seed, already had proved they could match up with any team in the country, having defeated Duke on Duke's home floor and nearly beaten them in two other meetings. And against Stanford, they played perhaps their best game of the season, hitting 58 percent of their shots, including nine of 13 three-pointers. The Cardinal made a 7-0 run early in the second half to shave a 10-point Terps lead to 3, but never seriously threatened Maryland after that. The Terrapins won by 14. It was a disappointing end to the season, but head coach Mike Montgomery focused on the positive. "These guys accomplished a lot," he said after the loss. "The disappointment is there, obviously, but it's not as though you're giving something up, like maybe we felt the last two years [when Stanford lost in the second round]." A healthy team might have gone farther. Sophomore Curtis Borchardt, who was emerging as a dominant defensive player and skilled scorer, broke a bone in his foot in January and missed the rest of the season. Justin Davis, a redshirt freshman who also shows great promise, was hampered for much of the final month of the season with an ankle injury and played only a few minutes in the NCAA tournament. Both of those players will be keys for next year's team, which loses three senior starters and perhaps a fourth, Jason Collins, who in April was contemplating whether he would enter the nba draft. Collins, who graduates in June, has two years of NCAA eligibility remaining after redshirting both his freshman and sophomore seasons. Incoming freshmen Josh Childress and Chris Hernandez may have an immediate impact. Childress, a 6-foot-7 forward from Lakewood, Calif., is among the top high school players in the country. Hernandez, a point guard from Fresno, Calif., is touted as the best player at his position in the West by several scouting magazines. Replacing the points and the rebounds will be easier, though, than replacing the leadership Montgomery got from the seniors, Ryan Mendez, Michael McDonald and Jarron Collins. They helped elevate the Stanford program into the nation's elite over the past four years. Hours after the loss to Maryland, Jacobsen already sounded wistful about their departure. "I have learned a lot from the seniors. My goal is to leave Stanford basketball with the pride and dignity that they have left us with. It's been a pleasure, and we will miss them." |
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WOMEN'S BASKETBALL Scoring Without a Point GuardDEFEND AND REBOUND.That was the game plan from Day One. That--and stay injury-free. "The number-one thing for us is to have both Susan [King] and Jamie [Carey] healthy," women's basketball coach Tara VanDerveer said at the beginning of the season. With four returning starters and five talented freshmen, Cardinal hopes for the postseason were high. In the last 16 years, VanDerveer has led Stanford to two national titles and six Final Fours. But it was not to be, this season. First, point guard Carey, '03, who has a history of recurring concussions dating to seventh grade, collided with another player in an October practice session, forcing her to retire. Then King, one of the top high school point guards in the nation, blew out her knee when she was fouled, hard, in December by a University of Oklahoma player--a run-in VanDerveer called "avoidable and unnecessary." The team rebounded with spirit, as Carey cheered from the bench and King stalked the sidelines on crutches. Freshman forward Nicole Powell, an all-around athlete who competed in tennis, badminton, shotput and discus in high school, donned a lucky headband and transformed herself into a point guard--at 6-foot-2. In a February game against Washington State, she turned in the third double-double in Stanford history: 10 points, 10 rebounds and 10 assists. In March, Powell was named Pac-10 Freshman of the Year. Other players, including juniors Bethany Donaphin, Enjoli Izidor and Lindsey Yamasaki, gave it their best shots as well, and Stanford shared the Pac-10 championship with Washington and Arizona State. As March Madness began, sports columnists speculated about the revenge match to come, trailing the 10th-seeded Cardinal back to Norman, Okla., the scene of King's injury. The Cardinal whumped George Washington in the opening round of the NCAAs, 76-51. And it became clear that junior center Cori Enghusen had drawn a new line in the paint as a post player, blocking most of the shots that came her way. But two days later, the team fizzled and lost to second-seeded Oklahoma, 67-50. Still, VanDerveer told the San Francisco Chronicle, "I am proud of this team for being here because we battled." Battled and rebounded. |
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TENNIS New Coach Adds Savvy to Team's Baseline SkillWITH A DISTINCTIVE whoosh, officials popped open cans of fuzzy yellow balls and tossed coins for the start of the tournament at Taube Family Tennis Stadium. But minutes into the March 9 match with the University of Arizona, the doubles play on Court 3 came to a halt as Stanford's Keiko Tokuda and Emilia Anderson approached the chair umpire to question the score he'd just announced. The ump listened to their replay of each point and finally nodded in agreement. Tokuda, unperturbed, went back to the baseline and won her service game. "If players think there's been a bad call, they have to verbally appeal to the umpire for an overrule," says Lele Forood, the first-year head coach of the women's team. "It's tough, but they've learned to do it in the 'juniors.'" The players aren't timid with their opponents, either. Forood is guiding a team that, as of April 8, was ranked No. 1 in the nation, with a record of 8-0 in Pac-10 play and 19-0 overall. In her 11 years as assistant and associate coach, Forood, '78, saw Stanford women win four NCAA championships and finish second three other times. Last year, they went 25-0. By the time they arrive on the Farm, Forood's players are not only technically skilled; they're unflappable veterans of 18-and-under competition. They've spent 10 years working their way up the national ladder and guzzling warm Perrier on the circuit of summer tournaments in Europe. Armed with an arsenal of shots learned at Florida tennis academies, they can hit big spinning serves and devastating slices, and they know how to mix it up on the court. But even the savviest among them often lack experience playing for a team. That's where Forood can dig into her coaching grab bag and come up with a teachable moment. A former All-American at Stanford, Forood knows how it feels to be practicing for a critical Pac-10 match during sleep-starved midterm week. She's experienced the pressure of the grandstand court at the U.S. Open, where she reached the doubles semifinals in 1976 with partner Rachel Giscafre. And she's weathered off-court challenges, like the media storm that erupted when she defeated Wimbledon champion and second-seed Virginia Wade at the 1977 U.S. Open. "It was one of those strange matches where I played well, and she didn't," Forood recalls, laughing. "The British press decided it was her worst loss ever and lambasted her, which took a little luster off the win." The self-deprecation is genuine--and winning. "We've built up a relationship with Lele and feel we can tell her about the things we want to work on," says Tokuda, '02, four-time New Jersey state high school champion. "She's taking the work we can do and building a program around it." Tokuda has downloaded her own contribution to team spirit--"The Unfair But Clean Team CD 2000-2001," a compilation of MP3 songs she burned to warm up practice sessions. And the players are chanting a new cheer this season. When they yell "4-40-Card" from the sidelines, they're telling teammates to hurry up and win--referring to a 4:40 p.m. flight they rushed to catch at the end of a long tournament day in Oregon, narrowly avoiding an overnight in the airport. "The dynamics are different every year," Forood says. "This year it's been a mix of a bunch of veterans and a few freshmen, plus brand-new doubles teams all around, so we're still getting the thing melded." As they hit the courts each day with buckets of balls, Forood says she harps on improving service: "You'd better be able to hold it, or you have no chance in the pros." Take more balls in the air, she tells players. Look for opportunities to come forward. Try to play behind your opponent. And learn from your teammates: "Sarah [Pestieau, '01] has such a pretty, classical style--just watch her drop shots." Forood thinks most of her current players will turn pro, including Laura Granville, '03, the defending NCAA singles champion, and Lauren Kalvaria, '02, one-half of the No. 1 doubles team with freshman Lauren Barnikow. "Because Lele's had the experience of playing in the pros, she's really given us a firsthand knowledge of what it's like," says Kalvaria, who has caught grief from teammates this season for the red-toed tennis shoes she's been sporting, à la Lindsay Davenport. "It's been my dream since I was 6 or 7, so I'd love to give it a try." |
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SQUASH A Different Racquet"DO YOU EVER . . ." "Whaaat?" "Do you ever wear earplugs when you play?" "Sorry. Can't hear you." It's a deafening sport. An unimposing black ball ricochets from wall to floor to ceiling. Rubber-soled shoes screech and stomp. Players yell out each point on their way to a game score of 15 as they whack serves and wicked crosscourts and bang into the tin--a metal out-of-bounds plate that reverberates in a realm of decibels all its own. And this is soft-ball squash. Players are passionate about the game, and they're convincing. "In high school, I was a four-year letterman in tennis," says junior Jason Miller. "Then I picked up a squash racquet--and boom, that was it." "Absolutely," senior Mark Goldenson chimes in. "Because the game values endurance, agility, finesse and technique more than strength, people who are 5-foot-3 can crush people who are 6-foot-something. Absolutely clobber them." Goldenson and Miller, president and treasurer, respectively, are leading the club sport to respectability at Stanford. Two years ago, they say, the five DeGuerre Complex courts looked like bomb shelters, with head-sized holes in the walls. Funding from the provost's office netted a renovation--two new regulation-sized international courts and three American courts, of a weirdly short, former-racquetball-court configuration. Last fall, the team of 15 also got its first coach--Richard Elliott, one of the world's top 20 players over age 35. Ranked 36th in the nation last year, Stanford battled to the 24th spot this year, winning the divisional title at the national championships. And they're expecting to climb higher. "Denison [University] went from 33 to 7 in five years," says Goldenson. "And we're gonna beat that." |
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Sports Notebook Splashing to
Second--and a World Record Another Second, This Time in Sync Ruggers Forfeit Their Big
Game Zimmerman Foils Them
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