By John Sleeper
Herald Writer
This is how life is in the upper echelon of women’s college basketball.
While the rest of the contenders do their own projecting on the Pacific-10 Conference’s inaugural women’s basketball tournament, asserting that, by gosh, four teams deserve bids to the NCAA Tournament and they have to choose the tourney’s semifinalists, Tara VanDerveer, coach of second-ranked, conference champ and 28-1 Stanford says the following:
“I really think we need to win the tournament to get a No. 1 (NCAA Tournament) seed.”
Must be nice.
It must be really nice to be the conference’s only lock for the NCAAs. Certainly, Arizona State (21-8) and Washington (17-10) can make persuasive arguments of why they deserve strong consideration from the NCAA Selection Committee, but conventional thinking is that that they probably have to do some damage in the Pac-10 tournament to nab an NCAA berth.
For Washington, a trip to the conference finals would do much to erase a so-so preseason schedule that included losses to Santa Clara and San Francisco. It also might make the committee more forgiving toward a team with double digits in the loss column.
“The stakes are high for all 10 teams,” said Washington coach June Daugherty, whose Huskies play the winner of tonight’s Oregon-Washington State game. “It’s important to focus on the things that are in your control. That’s just preparing well for the tournament and for our first opponent, whoever that’s going to be.”
Arizona State has a favorable record, but aside from finishing tied for second in the Pac-10 with Washington (a notable accomplishment, sure), the Sun Devils’ soft preseason schedule will do little to impress the committee.
Two of ASU’s wins came against Delaware State and something called “St. Peter’s.” The Sun Devils also beat Fordham, Chicago State, Northern Illinois and lost to Loyola Marymount and Western Michigan.
“In my mind, we have to win Saturday,” said ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne, whose team opens with archrival Arizona then.
Other than Stanford, Washington and ASU, no other Pac-10 team can claim to be deserving of an NCAA bid, barring the shockingly unexpected. USC, at 15-12, Oregon State (15-13) and Arizona (15-12) seemingly would have to win the tournament to get any consideration at all.
That means knocking off Stanford along the way. Stanford, which outscored its Pac-10 opponents by an average of 19.7 points a game. Stanford, which led virtually every statistical category the conference keeps. Stanford, with the conference’s best player in do-everything super-duper star Nicole Powell.
While many observers see the Cardinal as unbeatable, the conference’s coaches aren’t willing to concede anything. Only a week ago, USC led the Cardinal at the half, only to lose 78-60.
The plot thickened Wednesday with the news that Cardinal forward and certain first-team all-conference selection Lindsey Yamasaki will miss the tournament because of an appendectomy.
“There is nothing we’d like more than to see them again,” USC coach Chris Gobrecht said. “We are kicking ourselves for letting a great opportunity slip away from us. That’s almost motivation enough to do the very best we can and try to get it done against Oregon State. We really want to play them again.”
Considering the ease with which Stanford stormed through conference play, Gobrecht might be advised to be careful for what she wishes.
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