October 31, 2013

Third preseason honor for Chiney

Congratulations Chiney!

Chiney has been named to the 30-player list of preseason candidates for the 2013-14 Women's Basketball Lowe's Senior CLASS Award.

The Lowe's Senior CLASS Women's Award is presented annually to an NCAA Division I female senior basketball player who excels both on and off the court, based on personal qualities that define a complete student athlete  — community, classroom, character and competition.

The list will be narrowed to ten finalists midway through the season and voting by media, coaches and fans will begin then.

Candice won the award in 2008 and Nneka won it in 2012.

Here is more information:





October 29, 2013

Cardinal starts at #3 in Coaches' Poll

The preseason USA TODAY Sports women's basketball coaches poll puts Stanford at #3 with this evaluation:
Junior G Amber Orrange returns after averaging 10.8 points and 4.1 assists for a team bounced by Georgia in the Sweet 16. The real key will be senior F Chiney Ogwumike (22.4 ppg, 12.9 rpg), who was a consensus All-American and national player of the year finalist last season.

Click here for the complete poll and analysis.

October 25, 2013

More from Media Day

Pac-12 Media Day Recap, a full report of the day's activities from Stanford Athletis

A photo album of Stanford at Media Day, compiled by Stanford Athletics.

Stanford women's basketball team trades in couches for exercise equipment, a report of Stanford's expectations for this season by Elliott Almond (Mercury News).

New music video for Stanford women's basketball in the works, a preview of the Stanford women's basketball 2013-14 song by Kevin Danna (Pac-12).

October 24, 2013

Stanford picked to win the Pac-12

Pac-12 women's basketball keeps getting better and stronger.

FBC Pac-12 guru Bob Kinder predicts:

  • … some outstanding players return, and Cal will fight for the Pac-12 Championship.
  • I see USC as a top three team with Stanford and Cal, just ahead of Washington and UCLA.
  • The Huskies are back — this is a first division teamed
  • Colorado could well be a team that finishes in the top three in league play.
  • The injury bug, giant bug, has really hit UCLA — but wait until next season.
  • The Beavers can be a first place team. They are young but have talent and are pretty deep.
Nonetheless, at today's Pac-12 Women's Basketball Media Day, only Tara voted for Cal to finish first this season. The eleven other coaches voted for Stanford — for the 13th year in a row.

More information about Media Day here:

These are the players who attended Media Day. Click here for more group photos.

Each attending player posed for a photo. Click here for all the player photos.

October 23, 2013

Second preseason honor for Chiney

The Los Angeles Athletic Club has announced that Chiney is among 30 women’s basketball players named to the John R. Wooden Award Preseason Top 30 List.

More details here:

October 22, 2013

Media Day on Thursday

Thursday, Oct. 24 marks the beginning of the hoops season with the 2013 Pac-12 Women's Basketball Season Tip-off, where the league's head coaches and one player from each team come to Pac-12 Studios in San Francisco, Calif., to discuss the upcoming season.

Pac-12 Networks will have live coverage of the day, with each coach joining host Ashley Adamson plus analysts Mary Murphy and Ros Gold-Onwude on the set starting at noon PT.

The show will be re=broadcast at 8:30 Thursday night and 10:00 Friday morning.

Click here for more details.

October 20, 2013

The cost of concussions

Tom FitzGerald (San Francisco Chronicle) writes about Toni and goalkeeper Emily Oliver in Concussions cost 2 Stanford athletes their careers

October 18, 2013

2013-14 Media Coverage

Just 15 days until the first game! Here's where to see and hear the games you can't attend in person.

You can find the links to all coverage of a given game, as soon as the information is available, here:

Television

There'll be more televised Stanford women's basketball games this season than ever before — 22 of the Cardinal's 30 regular season games, as well as all the postseason games (Pac-12 and NCAA).

Fox Sports, ESPN and ESPNU will televise five of the regular season games and Pac-12 Networks will televise the other 17 (see the schedule for specific coverage).

More providers are carrying Pac-12 Networks than last season, including AT&T, but not DirecTV. See PAC-12 Channel Finder to determine coverage in a given zip code.

Webcasts

Just like last season, Pac-12 Networks will live-stream all non-televised Pac-12 women's basketball home games, both conference and non-conference. The live videos are produced by the host athletic department and streamed by Pac-12 Networks. Access to the Pac-12 live streams is unrestricted.

For Stanford games (Cal Poly, UC Davis, Arizona, and maybe the Vanguard exhibition game (tbd)), just click on the link in the schedule at game time. You'll be able to find links to other Pac-12 schools' streamed women's basketball games in the Pac-12 Women's Basketball Schedule.

In addition, Boston College All-Access will live-stream the game against Stanford. Access will require a paid subscription — here's the link.

Radio

KZSU 90.1 FM, the Stanford campus radio station, is planning to cover all the women's basketball games this season, both home and away — even the tournament in Puerto Vallarta, "assuming that everything works technology-wise," says KZSU Sports Director Sam Fisher.

Remember that you don't need to be in range of the station to hear the broadcasts. KZSU streams all its broadcasts to the internet. Just go to KZSU LIVE at gametime and select a channel — you can always find the women's basketball game on Channel 2.

Don't worry if the KZSU Schedule doesn't show that a game is being broadcast. The schedule has not been kept well up-to-date in the past. Have faith!

Live Stats (Revised Nov 7)

And, as a last resort or to supplement video or audio, there are live stats.

All the Pac-12 Athletics websites except USC and Utah were revised last summer and are now powered by NeuLion, instead of by CBS Sports.

Live game stats are provided by the host school. So there will be NeuLion stats for all Pac-12 games (except USC and Utah) and GameTracker (a CBS product) stats for most of the others.

Links to NeuLion live stats aren't available until after game start time. The links are provided in a list of events — this is the Stanford list.

October 10, 2013

New coach excited to be on the Farm

By FBC reporter, Judy Richter:

To say that Tempie Brown is enthusiastic about Stanford would be an understatement.

“There are days when I’m in awe of our players and Tara’s basketball mind,” said the women’s basketball team’s new assistant coach, referring to head coach Tara VanDerveer.

Tempie joined the coaching staff this summer. She replaced Trina Patterson, who left the Farm after two years to join the coaching staff at Old Dominion University in Virginia, her home state.

The affable new coach comes to Stanford from Michigan State University in East Lansing, where she had recently been promoted to associate head coach. Even though becoming an assistant coach at Stanford might be viewed as a step down, Tempie doesn’t see it that way.

She sees it as “an opportunity to work with Tara,” along with associate head coach Amy Tucker and assistant coach, Kate Paye. It is “an opportunity to work with the best, and Tara’s the best. (She) is one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen.” In addition, the “high academics were a big draw for me,” Tempie said in a recent interview.

As for the team – “This is a great group of kids. They’re doing something special to be at Stanford.”

Her duties include scouting, recruiting, and working with Kate to help the perimeter players. Like the other coaches, she works on academics with a group of four players to make sure they’re staying on track. Stanford has an academic resource center for all athletes, but the team’s small group approach is more personalized.

Shortly after arriving at Stanford, Tempie joined the team on its 10-day trip to Italy. Besides playing and winning three games against Italian club teams, the Stanford women took daily tours and had free time. Everyone who could play got a chance to play in those games.

The trip gave everyone a chance to know each other better and gave her a chance to see the players as individuals. Changing roommate assignments was another way for players to interact. “It was a great time,” she said, adding that this was her first trip to Italy.

Another task during the summer was to find a place to live, not always easy in the Bay Area. She has settled in Menlo Park with her dog, Mason, a Vizsla. A photo of Mason running along a beach is Tempie's Twitter profile photo.

According to Wikipedia, this Hungarian breed is the smallest of pointer-retriever breeds. “The Vizsla is a natural hunter endowed with an excellent nose and an outstanding trainability. Although they are lively, gentle-mannered, demonstrably affectionate and sensitive, they are also fearless and possessed of a well-developed protective instinct,” Wikipedia says.

Because she lives relatively close to campus, Tempie often walks to work. The campus is “gorgeous. The weather is stunning every single day. People smile more,” she said. After spending most of her life in areas with cold winters, she’s looking forward to the Bay Area’s more benign climate.

Tempie had spent four years coaching at MSU. She has another 10 years’ experience combined at Memphis, Northwestern, Lehigh, Eastern Michigan and Saginaw Valley State. She earned a bachelor’s degree in kinesiology at the University of Michigan in 1990 and a master’s in exercise physiology there in 1992.

While at UM she was a guard on the basketball team and served as its captain for two years. She ranks among the program’s top 15 scorers and among the top 20 in career assists and steals.

Now that she’s at Stanford, she’s looking forward to watching “our team compete and to getting know the players better.” The five freshmen are doing well. “They’re quick learners and great people.” They’re a fun group, but “they do work hard,” she said. “There’s a great camaraderie on this team.”

Although the team has four returning starters – fifth-year senior forward Mikaela Ruef, senior forward Chiney Ogwumike, senior guard Sara James and junior guard Amber Orrange – Tempie declined to name a starting lineup with one exception, Chiney. “She’s a great player and a great leader,” the coach said.

With the team going to five Final Fours in the past six years, fans have come “to expect success, but that’s the mindset around here,” she said. National championships are the goal of every team at Stanford.

“It’s an amazing place. Greatness is the norm,” she concluded.

Open Practice

There will be an open practice again this year, on Saturday October 19.

The time depends on the time of the Stanford/UCLA football game that afternoon, which was announced this morning to be 12:30pm. So the open practice will be in the morning, but the actual time hasn't been announced yet. Nor has whether there will be a gathering of the team and fans after the open practice.

Look for details in the next day or two in the FBC schedule.

October 09, 2013

NCAA announces postseason sites

The NCAA has announced the 2014 regional hosts: Louisville, Nebraska, Notre Dame and ...

STANFORD!    

The women's basketball committee decided over the summer to allow schools to host the regionals for the first time in nearly a decade, with the thought it may increase attendance.

All four schools have had great success at home. Since 2006-07, Stanford is 92-2 at Maples Pavilion and Notre Dame is 85-11 at home. Louisville and Nebraska each have won 81 percent of their home games in the past six years.

The Cardinal will likely stay fairly close to home for the first and second rounds too — two of the sixteen sites are Seattle and Los Angeles.

Click here for the NCAA announcement.

October 08, 2013

Chiney named to Wade Watch List

For the third season in a row, the Women's Basketball Coaches Association (WBCA) has named Chiney to the preseason "Wade Watch" list of candidates.

More details here:

October 01, 2013

Fire and Ice


Aaron Fischman (SLAM) looks a bit into the future and predicts that Nneka and Chiney, "... are well on their way to becoming two of the top players in the WNBA within the next few years."

Read more in his story,  Fire and Ice.