This Date in Cardinal Women's Hoops: 4-01-90
They visited the White House, twice played in front of a record crowd for a
women’s Final Four, and were followed in a PBS documentary.
Indeed everything about the first national championship for Stanford’s
women’s basketball was uncharted territory.
It had never been done before, although the Cardinal spent the entire 1989-90
season preparing to get it done. Stanford completed its title run on this very
date 19 years ago, when a record-setting 32-1 season ended with an 88-81 victory
over No. 9 ranked Auburn.
“We just know this is our season. We want it all,” junior forward Trisha
Stevens said during the season. “So there's nothing that's going to get in our
way.”
A crowd of 20,023 at Knoxville, Tenn.’s Thompson-Boling Arena watched the
final, whose gathering surpassed the semifinals, when Stanford upended Dawn Staley and #12-ranked Virginia before over 19,000, which briefly broke all women’s Final
Four attendance records. CBS Sports (Hide your daughters, folks - it’s Pat O’Brien!)
was in "the house that Pat Summit built". So were a lot of local
basketball fans intent on seeing a hometown gal enjoy her last college hoops
hurrah.
Few have ended their collegiate careers in the fashion of Jennifer Azzi, the
program-changing Stanford guard and Tennessee-born native of Oak Ridge, a town
just 25 miles northwest of Knoxville. Azzi received two huge ovations from the
friendly crowd, one during starting lineup introductions, the other as she came
to bench after fouling out at the 1:28 mark. Before heading to the bench for the
final time in a Cardinal uniform, Azzi had scored 17 points, nailing four
three-pointers to secure a national championship and the NCAA tournament's most
outstanding player award..
“I was kinda thinking we had won, but there was still a lot time left,”
said Azzi, a lightly-recruited guard out of high school who won the Naismith
Award that year honoring the NCAA Player of the Year(as well as the Wade Trophy and the Honda-Broderick Award). “I was just sitting there
thinking, ‘Let it be over.’ ”
Point guard Sonja Henning netted 21 points, slicing up Auburn’s vaunted
zone press. Azzi and and classmate Katy Steding made five three-pointers
combined in the opening nine minutes to stake the Cardinal to a 22-11 edge. The
battling Tigers led by as many as nine points late in the first half, only to
see Stanford take a 12-point lead with 10 minutes left.
''This is absolutely amazing," Steding said. "This is as sweet as
the best hot fudge sundae you've ever tasted."
No one knew at the time that even bigger things were in store for Steding and Azzi, who would later team to win an Olympic gold medal for the United States and their own college coach VanDerveer.
Sweet it was, but a decidedly sour taste of defeat had followed the club for the previous year ever since Venus Lacy and Louisiana Tech had eliminated Stanford from the 1989 regional finals.
All ensuing efforts pointed to a national championship and a return date with
the Lady Techsters, who themselves went unbeaten until the Final Four. The
Cardinal rolled through the season, losing only at Washington in the final
minute.
On hand to document the season-long mobilization effort were producer Becky
Smith (“Queer Eye for the Straight Guy”) and the acclaimed “Frontline”
series. The episode first aired nationally on PBS in March of 1994, offering a
women’s sports fans welcome respite from the recent Tonya Harding/Nancy
Kerrigan "knee-capping-for-hire" shenanigans.
Narrated by actress Alfre Woodard, the program chronicled the championship
season over a six-month stretch, from fall workouts’ sweat to the national
title glow. Revelations ranged from head coach Tara VanDerveer’s sometimes
contentious relationships with her players (Steding, for one) to Stanford’s
lasting legacy in women’s sports.
In April of 1896, Cal and Stanford played in the first intercollegiate women’s
basketball game. Stanford’s enterprising young ladies won the 9-on-9 contest
by a score of 2-1, only to soon see school president David Starr Jordan
(depicted as part Montgomery Burns, part Dabney Coleman from “9-to-5”) ban
organized women’s sports from his Stanford campus.
Nearly a century later, Stanford athletic director Andy Geiger oversaw a
flourishing women’s basketball program. Maples Pavilion averaged nearly 3,000
fans per-game in 1989-90, about 10 times the usual draw when Steding and Azzi
were freshmen on the Farm.
VanDerveer and assistants Amy Tucker, Julie Plank and Rene Brown grew their
program with very hefty recruiting budget. Blue-chippers like Henning
(Wisconsin), Steding (Oregon) and Chris MacMurdo (South Carolina) made for
immediate help. The Cardinal used its lofty academic reputation as leverage,
selling a Stanford diploma as a safety net for a sport without the financial
draw of a professional women’s hoops league.
Having arrived in 1985 from Ohio State, VanDerveer went just 13-15 her first
year, 14-14 the next and a break-out 27-5 in 1988, when the Cardinal won an NCAA
Tournament game for the very first time. All key components returned for
1989-90, when the freshman class featured stars-to-be in dominating power
forward Val Whiting and guard Molly Goodenbour.
“I had a lot of confidence,” VanDerVeer said at the time of her propgram-building
efforts. “In my mind, I felt we were a Final Four-caliber team at Ohio State.
So I thought, ‘OK I can do it again.’”
Auburn dared Henning to be the key factor, focusing its defensive efforts
around Azzi and Steding. The latter buried a championship game record six
three-pointers. Whiting and Stevens pounded away against the Tigers’
foul-troubled frontline.
Henning salted away the championship, making seven foul shots down the
stretch as her teammates locked arms in giddy anticipation on the sideline. All
that was out of place was an all-tournament team without the outstanding junior
point guard. No matter.
“With all due respect, I didn’t come here to make the tournament team,”
she said. “I came here to win a national championship.”
Are you fully subscribed to The Bootleg?
If not, then you are missing out on all the top Cardinal coverage we provide
daily on our award-winning website. Sign up today for the biggest and best in Stanford sports coverage
with TheBootleg.com (sign-up)!