Stanford's Tara VanDerveer eyeing 900 wins
When you click on the Stanford women’s basketball archives page on GoStanford.com, the first thing you see is the list of accomplishments produced by the squad over the years: 22 Pac-12 regular-season titles (including 13 in a row), 27 NCAA postseason showings (26 in a row), 20 Sweet 16 appearances (six straight), 16 Elite Eights, 11 Final Fours, four national championship game appearances, and, most importantly, two national titles. With the exception of the trip to the NCAA postseason in 1982 (too busy résumé-building at THE Ohio State University) and everything accomplished in the 1995-96 campaign (can you really fault a stint coaching the U.S. National Team?), there is one common thread among in those achievements listed above:
Tara VanDerveer has been there for ALL OF THEM.
Stanford women’s basketball is wholly a VanDerveer production, and one of the finest head coaches in all of college basketball, men’s or women’s, is potentially hours away from reaching even more rarified air by becoming just the fifth women’s hoops head honcho to earn her 900th coaching victory should the Card defeat Florida Gulf Coast at 2 p.m. PT today in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
[Related: 2013-14 Stanford women's basketball schedule]
Move over, Pat Summitt, Jody Conradt, C. Vivian Stringer and Sylvia Hatchell, there’s about to be enough of y’all to field your own basketball team.
It’s easy to quantify what VanDerveer has meant to the game in terms of amassing victories and regular and postseason achievements. But it’s also about how she has elevated the players she has mentored over the years, helping her student-athletes to 20 All-American honors, 17 Pac-10/12 Player of the Year awards, 61 first-team All-Pac-10/12 selections and two Naismith Player of the Year honors as the boss, not to mention the 34 appointments to Team USA in which she has had a hand.
Of course, there is that game against Dunk City to think about, and that’s the only thing VanDerveer is consumed with right now. But be it today (highly likely), tomorrow or whenever, No. 900 is coming very soon.
And, with the way Stanford has been going the last few years, 1,000 won’t be too far off, either.