White-out for Sunday

            Show Stanford Pride by wearing WHITE for Sunday!!!

            

            Before I get into any commentary, in case you read this BEFORE Sunday's matchup with South Carolina, STANFORD Basketball has called for a "white-out" on Sunday.  Red is the "road" color for both Stanford AND South Carolina.  Stanford wears white at home.  On Sunday, the best way to show support for the home team is to show up in WHITE! (Hopefully there won't be much of a South Carolina crowd at Maples -- but the TV cameras will have an easier time showing our crowd's support of the CARD if the crowd is in white.)

 

            Hannah Jump --the 3-pt star!

 

            "Shooters shoot -- shooters have no memory." Those two oft repeated basketball truisms were on full display at Maples Wednesday night as Hannah Jump tied her career high of eight 3-pointers (8 of 15) against Cal Poly scoring 24 points while playing only 23 minutes.  Her performance also demonstrated the confidence that the Stanford team, the coaching staff, and Hannah have in her shooting touch because Jump started out colder than the outside air.  She missed her first four 3-point attempts, going a dismal one-for-six (16.6%) in the first quarter of action.  But then...Jump went seven-of-nine (77.7%) for the rest of the game including one spurt in the 3rd Quarter where she hit three triples in the span of 73 seconds!  Amazingly, that 53.3% success rate from 3-point range is slightly LOWER than Hannah's 58.8% average so far this season! WOW!

            The good news for Stanford fans is that in addition to Hannah's incredible 3-point percentage, three other Cardinal players with more than 10 3-point attempts are above 40% on their 3-point shots - Prechtel, Demetre, and Nivar.  This is reflected in the team's 3-point success rate of 41% while holding opposing teams to 27.6%. We'll see how these numbers hold up when the competition heats up.  Our Pac-12 rivals have played some of the same California teams that the CARD have taken on with similarly dominating results.  

 

            You Can't Teach Tall

 

            This team is tall! What is even better is that our tall trees are talented and coachable! No amount of coaching or personal effort can turn 5'6'' into 6'5" (or better still 6'7"), but there have been plenty of tall players in the world of basketball whose footwork, hands, shooting touch, court awareness, and focus didn't allow them to turn their height into basketball success.   The Stanford "bigs" are all hardworking in addition to being talented and coachable. That's why Iriafen, Betts, and Brink all have double digit scoring averages while averaging less than 18 minutes-per-game of playing time.  Cameron Brink leads the nation in blocks and Lauren Betts isn't far behind.

            Of course, once again these successes and encouraging stats have come against teams who, come March, aren't likely to be playing, certainly not in the Sweet 16 or even the Round of 32.  It remains to be seen how we will perform against other elite programs, a group that includes virtually the entire Pac-12!  Sunday's game against South Carolina will be our first real report card.  The good news is that a game against a top opponent in November is a win regardless of the outcome.  These games show what is going right and where work needs to be done.  Remember when the Candice Wiggins led Cardinal got blown out by UConn in November only to come back and take the Huskies down in the National Semifinals?  

 

            Sloppy Doesn't Win Against Quality Teams

 

            The most disappointing aspect of Wednesday night's performance was the sloppiness!  There were post entry passes too tall for even Lauren Betts to catch -- and perimeter passes that were telegraphed so completely that they were virtually giveaways.  The much, much smaller Cal Poly team managed to get 23 rebounds (okay, yes, we got 44) because of a failure to box out. We can hope that these things will clear up when the pressure of a tough game is on -- but it is worrisome because bad habits, once developed, can be hard to cure. 

 

             Questions for the Week

1.  Will we fill Maples for the South Carolina game when ABC is broadcasting it?

            A match up between the number one and number two teams in the country is exciting, even more when the two teams are the winners of the last two National Championships with both going down in the National Semifinals in the year they weren't champs.  Add to that three of the nation's top players and two of the best coaches -- well it just doesn't get much better.  So, will fans show up for our team?  

        

 2.  Are College Sports Really for Student Athletes?

            This blog post is being written as the UC Board of Regents is meeting with the issue of UCLA jumping to the Big Ten on the table.  The question boils down to are decisions about athletic competition for college students being made based on the best interests of the students and the environment or based on the best interests of the athletic department's bottom line?  Are college sports actually COLLEGE sports or minor league professional sports enterprises masquerading as college activities?

            There is no denying that the broadcast deal the Big Ten has negotiated pays big - not just big - HUGE dollars to Big Ten schools.  The resulting cross country travel requirements might not even be too onerous for football players who only play once a week, usually on Saturdays.  But in other sports more than one competition a week may occur (basketball to name one) and competitions are scheduled throughout the week not just on Saturdays.  The notion of regularly adding multiple cross-country flights makes a total joke out of the requirement that student athletes be required to spend no more than 20 hours a week on their sports commitment.  It also makes a mockery out of the notion that student athletes are given a college education in exchange for their athletic efforts.  One simply can't get a quality education if, in addition to practice and game time, a player is spending 10 or 20 hours traveling at least every other week during the sport season.  

            Even worse, to my mind, is the distortion to the educational endeavor that these huge broadcasting deals create.  How much of the massive sports contract bonanza will go towards hiring top notch research scientists, gifted philosophers, social scientists, and other scholars whose expertise can help us solve the challenges we face: climate change, income inequality, racism, and the jump of animal viruses to humans among others.  When the highest paid person on the campus is the football coach, football success can become more important than educational excellence or even student safety. Hopefully, the UC Regents will take a vote for sanity.  If not, perhaps it will be up to legislative bodies to address this issue.