The Stanford Cardinal women’s basketball team won their first National Championship since 1992 on Sunday night, topping Pac-12 rival Arizona 54-53 in a thrilling finale to the Women’s NCAA Tournament.
Howard Megdal, longtime sportswriter and editor/founder of women's basketball newsletter The IX, joined Lori Rubinson to discuss the game and the NCAA Women's Tournament, which was won by a Stanford team that was one of the game’s best despite being behind the eight-ball all year.
“Nobody can say that winning the championship this year is any lesser, and that was a fear of a lot of people the game,” Megdal said. “What it turned out to be is that every team – and yes, Stanford, because California made it impossible to play there, they went on the road for a long period of time – but every team was getting games canceled and trying to arrange replacements on the fly! It’s the type of thing difficult to do while trying to get a Stanford education and play Division I basketball. This season was different, but not in a negative way.”
There was quite a contrast in coaches in the finals between Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer and Arizona’s Adia Barnes, two ladies on the opposite ends of almost every spectrum who share a love of the game and have tremendous respect for one another.
“In Tara, you have a true giant of the game, an incredible force for decades but hadn’t won a national title in 29 years – a gap that is unheard of!” Megdal said. “Adia Barnes is part of a generation of basketball minds who played in the WNBA and fostered their knowledge there. In that case, she has gone to her alma mater and turned it into a power – they won six games her first year, so to go from 2019 WNIT champions to one basket away from winning a National Title, is amazing.”
Howard and Lori first broke down the scrappy Arizona squad that has become a force behind Aria McDonald, a possible lottery pick in the upcoming WNBA Draft.
“What Arizona has is length, and relentless pursuit of the ball,” Megdal said. “They’re willing to switch and can do it all on the court, defend you two through four or three through five. Aria McDonald can score, but she’s a pass-happy point guard as well – someone like Allen Iverson or Crystal Dangerfield.”
And of course, Stanford is the national champion with a balanced, deep team, but Lori called out one unsung hero on the squad: Anna Wilson, the Co Pac-12 Defensive Player of the year with McDonald and younger sister of Russell Wilson.
“She was getting beaten up, but fighting through screens…I thought she was a player that doesn’t show up in the box score,” Rubinson said, “but one with a tremendous contribution.”
“Anna Wilson is a glue person, and you need players like that. Stanford has so many of them,” Megdal said. “They had 11 players play in this game. I asked Tara about this before the Final Four, because she shortened her bench down the stretch into the Elite Eight game against Louisville, and I wondered if that would be a forerunner to what we would see – it was not. She was looking for contributions from everyone, and got it.”
One of those big contributors? Haley Jones, who was the Cardinal’s leading scorer in the finals and won Most Outstanding Player.
“She was the 2019 top overall recruit, and the fact that Stanford got here was really a key beginning for this championship,” Megdal said. “How do you not look for Haley Jones? She understands what very few players ever do: she knows where she needs to be on the floor at all times. She finds the key rebounds she needs to have, and the spots in the defense where she can get her shot.”
Listen to the entire segment with Lori Rubinson and Howard Megdal below!
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