Finals Fun

Michelle Smith (espnW) gives us a glimpse of what Finals Week is like for some of our hoopsters. Read here...

The Tigers are coming

Finals are almost over, and the Cardinal will be back in Maples on Saturday afternoon, eager to take on their next opponent — the Princeton Tigers.

The two teams have competed only once before — in a Stanford invitational tournament at Maples in 2002.

However, one of the visiting Princetonians knows Maples well. Milena Flores (Stanford '01) is in her fifth season as an assistant coach at Princeton where she works primarily with the guards. Milena was a standout point guard herself at Stanford. She holds the Stanford records for the second-most assists in a game and the third-most career assists.

There may be a surprising number of Tiger fans at Maples. Two of the Princeton starters are from the Bay Area. Niveen Rashid is from Danville and Lauren Polansky is a native of Danville.

Princeton is favored to be the Ivy League champion this season, as they were the preceding two seasons. They went to the NCAA tournament twice, but lost in the first round both times. They have a tough schedule this season that they hope will take them further in the postseason.

Their current RPI rank, as reported by Collegiate Basketball News, is 17 and their schedule strength rank is 23.

The team is a lot different than it was last year, although it lost only one player to grauation — Ivy League Player of the Year Addie Micir. Micir was one of the top perimeter shooters in the league who could also drive to the basket, and the Tigers' play revolved around her.

Last season 30% of the Tigers' points came from beyond the arc. This season it's just 22%, but the Tigers' offense is faster-paced and they're looking to do more in transition. Head coach Courtney Banghart said “We’re going to be messier; we’re going to be trapping; we’re going to be playing at full court on both sides of the ball. Our looks are different, so we’ve tweaked our offensive looks to better suit our personnel.”

The Tigers' new style was working very well as they won their first six games. But they've had tougher opponents since then and have lost three of their last four — to No. 24 Delaware, Navy and No. 23/21 DePaul.

The probable starters are:

• #24, 6'0" junior forward Niveen Rasheed rejoins the Tigers after missing half of last season with a torn ACL. She leads the team in scoring (17.4 ppg) and rebounding (9.0 rpg) and is second in assists and steals. She has been the top scorer in seven of Princeton's 10 games this season and the top rebounder in six of them.


• #30, 6'0" senior guard Lauren Edwards has started every game since the beginning of her sophomore year. She averages 9.4 points and 4.5 rebounds per game. She is the only Tiger to shoot much from beyond the arc — she makes 1.4 per game at a rate of 30%.


• #44, 6'3" senior center Devona Allgood averages 8.9 points and 6.7 rebounds per game.


• #20 6'0" junior forward Kate Miller averages 6.2 points and 2.0 rebounds per game.


• #3, 5'8" junior guard Lauren Polansky runs the point for the Tigers. She was the Ivy League Defensive Player of the Year last season. She leads the team in steals (3.4 per game) and assists (2.5 per game), but has a couple more turnovers than assists.

Here are Princeton's 2011-12 statistics and their roster.

Kate and Stanford have always been a good fit

Kate explains why Stanford is such a special place for her and why her job is a dream situation in her blog for the Buck/Cardinal Clubhouse. Read here...

Rankings 101

Which team is the best?

How much better is this team than that team?

It's all a matter of either opinion or statistics.

Opinion

Informed opinions for Division I Women's Basketball are expressed in these two weekly polls that rank the top 25 teams:

AP Top 25

The rankings are compiled by polling 40 sports writers or broadcasters across the nation. These are the 2011-12 season voters.

ESPN/USA Today Coaches

The rankings are compiled by polling 31 voters, all head coaches at Division I institutions and members of the WBCA (Women's Basketball Coaches Association). There is one coach from each conference that has at least eight teams. June Daugherty from Washington State is the Pac-12 voter this season. These are the 2011-12 season voters.

When you read, for example, that Stanford is ranked 3/5, it means that Stanford is No. 3 in the AP Top 25 Poll and No. 5 in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches Poll.

These rankings are just a popular way of evaluating teams. They are not a factor in selecting teams for conference or national post-season tournaments.

Statistics, Winning Percentage

Each conference ranks its members by their winning percentage (games won divided by games played). Once conference play has begun, the teams are ranked by their overall percentage within conference percentage. These are the current Pac-12 Standings

The standings are used as seedings for the conference tournament.

Statistics, RPI

The RPI (Rating Percentage Index) is a measure of strength of schedule and how a team does against that schedule, as well as its winning percentage. It is used by the NCAA as one of their factors in deciding which teams to invite to the NCAA tournament and where to seed them.

The formula for the RPI is:
RPI = ((0.25 * WP) + (0.50 * OWP) + (0.25 *OOWP)), where:

WP

is the team's weighted winning percentage against Division I opponents. Games against non-Division I opponents are not included in the RPI calculation.

The calculation of the winning percentage for RPI purposes is changed this season (as it was for the men in 2004-05) to give more weight to road wins vs. home wins. A team's win total = ((1.4 * road wins) +( 0.6 * home wins) + (1.0 * neutral site wins)).

OWP

is the team's opponents' non-weighted winning percentage, excluding results against the team in question. It is also called the team's schedule strength.

OOWP

is the team's opponents' opponents' non-weighted winning percentage, or the team's opponents' schedule strength, excluding results against the team in question.

The RPI and Schedule Strength of the 342 Division I Women's Basketball teams are available on the internet from these organizations:

• NCAA, updated weekly on Monday morning, beginning in late December.
• Collegiate Basketball News, updated weekly on Monday morning.
• Real Time Sports Ranking, updated daily.
• Warren Nolan, updated daily.

The rankings from these organizations vary quite a lot, perhaps because of data errors, perhaps because of slight differences in the formulas they use. No matter — in the end, the only rankings that matter are those from the NCAA.

Nothing rattles Susan

In this week's Total Access installment, Michelle Smith (espnW) spends time with Susan Borchardt, Stanford's strength and conditioning coach.

Susan has three babies at home and two sports teams to care for, but she makes it look like it's a piece of cake. Read more...

More honors for the Ogwumikes

I neglected to report last week that Nneka and Chiney added another accolade to their collection — each was named to the Naismith Trophy early-season watch list.

They have both already been named to the Wade Trophy and John R. Wooden Award preseason watch lists.

Nneka is also a candidate for the Lowe's Senior CLASS Award and for the Associated Press All-America team.

It's so much fun watching the sisters play and so gratifying to see them earn national recognition!

Here's more information about the Naismith nomination:

• The announcement from the Atlanta Tipoff Club includes a list of all the nominees.
• The announcement from Stanford Athletics includes details of Nneka's and Chiney's accomplishments.

Cardinal leashes the 'Dogs

The Cardinal shut down the perimeter for the first half, and held the Bulldogs to two (of fifteen) 3-pointers. By then the score was 56-27, and although the 'Dogs fared better in the second half, they never reduced the gap by much. Final: Stanford 93, Fresno State 59.

The Bulldogs took better care of the ball than the Cardinal. They had seven steals to our five and ten turnovers to our sixteen.

But the Cardinal excelled in the paint. They out-rebounded the Bulldogs 67-28! Coincidentally, the Cardinal had 28 O-boards and Nneka & Chiney combined for 28 rebounds.

The Bulldogs ended with eight 3-pointers. Bullseye Bonnie had almost as many herself. She sank six of eight — that's 75%! (Bonnie's release is so quick that no-one got a photo of her launching a shot. In the photo on the left, she watches one of her 3-pointers fall.) Bonnie also stepped up her defense in this game and blocked three shots.

Nneka sat out most of the first half after two fouls (one of them bogus!), but came back strong in the second half and ended as the leading scorer with a double-double of 28 points (at a rate of 69%) and 12 rebounds.

Chiney reigned under our basket and theirs with a career-high 16 rebounds. She also scored 13 points.

Lindy was back in action today and was the Cardinal's fourth double-digit scorer. She made 57% of her shots, including two of five 3-pointers and ended with 10 points.

Erica distinguished herself today by grabbing six rebounds, four of them O-boards, in nine minutes of play.

Here are game reports:

• No. 5 Stanford Stomps Fresno St. 93-59 by Janie McCauley (Associated Press)
• Stanford women power past Fresno State by Jeff Davis (The Fresno Bee)
• Bulldogs Fall to No. 5 Stanford from Fresno State Athletics

The box score and play-by-play,

A gallery of photos from Fresno State Athletics,

And photos by Gary Kazanjian (AP Photo):

Nneka looks for a shot Joslyn puts up a shot Jasmine drives past Ki-Ki Moore Nneka drives through Bulldog defense Chiney attempts a steal Joslyn in a Bulldog sandwich Lindy takes off on a fast break Chiney drives to the basket

Going to the Dogs

The Cardinal travel across the valley to the Savemart Center on Sunday to play the Fresno State Bulldogs. Finals break begins on Monday so this is your last chance to see them play until mid-December.

If you don't go to the game, you can watch it on Fresno State All-Access, listen to it on KZSU or follow the action on GameTracker.

Five years ago, Fresno State head coach Adrian Wiggins brought in a handful of freshmen, and the Bulldogs made their first NCAA Tournament appearance after winning their first Western Athletic Conference (WAC) championship. The Fab Five (Jaleesa Ross, Marnique Arnold, Taja Edwards, Emma Andrews and Hayley Munro) went on to lead the Bulldogs to a school-record 98 wins, three WAC regular-season titles, three WAC tournament championships and four trips to the NCAA dance.

The Fab Five graduated this year and took with them 62% of the Bulldogs' scoring and 57% of their rebounding, Taking their place are four freshmen, two transfers from four-year schools who must sit out, and guard Ki-Ki Moore who becomes eligible after tranferring from Washington State last season.

The rebuilt team has made a good start toward capturing another WAC title in their final season in the conference before transferring to the Mountain West. The Bulldogs have won five of the first seven games of a fairly challenging schedule (Sagarin/CBS ranks their schedule strength at 77). They've lost only to USC and Pepperdine, where they blew a 12-point lead late and lost in double overtime.

The Bulldogs are a guard-oriented team with a run-and-shoot style of play and are currently one of the best 3-point shooting teams in the nation. They were ranked #4 last week with an average of 9.7 per game; their rate of 39.7% was ranked #9. Since then, they sank 17 3-pointers in their victory over Oregon and upped the average to 10.7 and the percentage to 40.5.

They are aggressive on defense. They lead the WAC in steals (12.5 per game) and turnover margin (5 less than their opponents).

Although they have a good turnover margin, they don't take good care of the ball themselves. They average almost as many turnovers (16.5) as assists (16.7).

The starters for Fresno State are:

• #24, 5.8" redshirt junior guard Ki-Ki Moore sat out last season after transferring from Washington State, where she was named to the Pac-10 All-Freshman team. She is the Bulldogs' leading scorer (19.6 ppg) and rebounder (6.6 rpg). She averages 2.1 3-pointers a game at a rate of 55.6%.


• #25, 6'1" junior guard/forward Rosie Moult hails from Australia, where she played for the U19 team for two years. She is the Bulldogs' best 3-point shooter, averaging 3.6 per game at a rate of 42%. She averages 14.6 points and 4.9 rebounds per game.


• #12, 5'10" senior guard/forward Blakely Goldberg transferred to Fresno State last year after two seasons with Fresno City College She averages 8.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 1.6 3-pointers per game.


• #10, 6'1" freshman forward Alex Sheedy is the eighth Australian to join the women's basketball program. She was a member of the Australia U19 team for three years. She averages 6.9 points and 4.6 rebounds per game.


• #33, 5'5" sophomore guard Taylor Thompson is the Bulldogs' best ball-handler. She averages 4.4 assists per game with only half as many turnovers. She also averages 6.0 points and 4.1 rebounds per game.

Coming off the bench for significant minutes are:

• #11, 5'8" freshman guard Madison Parrish is the second Parrrsh to play at Fresno State. Her sister, Amy, was an All-WAC forward and is now a third-year assistant coach. Madison averages 24.4 minutes, 8.1 points and 1.7 3-pointers per game.


• #31. 6'3" senior center Veronica Wilson averages 18.4 minutes, 7.9 points and 4.0 rebounds per game.


• #5, 5'10' sophomore guard Bree Farley is the third Australian on the squad. She averages 16.0 minutes, 3.4 points and 3.0 rebounds per game.

Here are the Bulldogs' 2010-11 statistics and their roster.

Working through injury and growing pains

In her weekly behind-the-scenes visit with the Cardinal, Michelle Smith (espnW) reports that the freshmen are getting more playing time because of injuries.

She focuses on Taylor's progress as she adjusts to starting for a top college team.

Read here...

The "Page Five" Chronicles

Stanford Athletics has added a nice feature to its weekly Women's Basketball Game Notes — player's thoughts on anything under the sun. It appears on, guess where, page 5 of the play notes.

On Nov 11, Chiney and Joslyn and Grace kicked off the new feature.

On Nov 17, Amber and Sarah added their contributions, and Grace provided a second installment of her thoughts on reality TV

This week featured Mikaela's report of her perfect Thanksgiving and another reality TV installment from Grace.