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As the NCAA Women's Final Four turns 40, Stanford returns for its 15th appearance.
It's not something to be taken for granted, and certainly coach Tara VanDerveer is respectful enough of the demanding process not to do so.
"You're always happy to go to the Final Four, but sometimes you're really happy," VanDerveer said Sunday after a 59-50 Elite Eight win over Texas in which the Cardinal avenged a 61-56 November defeat.
"I'm thrilled because of the team that I'm coaching."
Stanford will defend its national championship starting Friday in Minneapolis with largely the same team that won it all in 2021. That continuity of eminently likable personnel partly accounts for VanDerveer's enthusiasm and willingness, at 68 years old, to encourage fun at her own expense.
She put her backwards hat on again during the regional title celebration in Spokane and joined her players in a generally well received version of the Electric Slide after taking lessons during the weekend from Pac-12 Player of the Year Haley Jones.
"She knows the Cupid Shuffle, so we had to come up with something new," Jones said. "She was very receptive and great to constructive criticism."
"When you have a great teacher, students do better," said VanDerveer, straight out of the takes-one-to-know-one book from the winningest coach in NCAA basketball history.
Stanford (32-3, with 24 consecutive wins) will play in the Final Four nightcap against Connecticut (29-5), which outlasted North Carolina State 91-87 on Monday in the first double-overtime Elite Eight game in the history of the women's event.
The second-seeded Huskies are playing in their 14th consecutive Final Four in search of a 12th national title — but their first since 2016.
South Carolina (33-2) and Louisville (29-4), which are No. 1 seeds like Stanford, will meet in the other semifinal.
UConn guard Paige Bueckers, the 2020-21 national Player of the Year, is from Hopkins, Minn. Just as Stanford's Lexie and Lacie Hull helped will the Cardinal to their hometown, Spokane, for a regional, Bueckers did the same for UConn in the regional final, scoring 23 of her 27 points in the second half and overtime.
"I said going into tonight that our program is not going to win this game," UConn coach Geno Auriemma said. "Programs don't win this game. Programs can get you to this game, but somebody needs to be big, like really big, to get you to the next two games.
"Without a performance like that (from Bueckers), there is no next weekend. No matter how good the rest of your team is, doesn't matter."
VanDerveer, in her 43rd overall season and 35th at Stanford, has 1,157 victories. That's nine more than Auriemma has collected in his 37 seasons (all at UConn). He is 11-7 head-to-head against Stanford, including a 53-47 win in the 2010 NCAA championship.
UConn will be without 6-foot-5 forward Dorka Juhasz, who suffered a fractured wrist in the second quarter Monday. The Huskies lost 72-59 at Oregon on Jan. 17 when they were without Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Christyn Williams due to injuries or COVID protocols and used just six players.
In the 2021 Final Four, Stanford beat South Carolina (66-65) and Arizona upset UConn (69-59). Then Stanford edged the Wildcats, 54-53, in the first all-Pac-12 NCAA title game.
UCLA reaches WNIT semifinals
UCLA is two victories away from its second WNIT title in eight years and the third for the Pac-12 during that stretch (Arizona won in 2019).
The Bruins needed three overtimes to oust Wyoming, 82-81, in the third round, amazingly enough after Wyoming won overtime and triple-overtime games in the first two rounds.
Charisma Osborne played 50 minutes against Wyoming, then followed up with a 31-point, 10-rebound double-double in a 74-66 quarterfinal win at Oregon State.
The Beavers rallied from a 30-16 first-quarter deficit to beat New Mexico, 78-73, in the third round before losing to UCLA.
"We went three overtimes in Laramie, traveled 13 hours to get to Corvallis and were completely mentally locked in and prepared," UCLA coach Cori Close said.
"This was probably the best execution of a scouting report we've had all year long. We always talk about leaning into the hard (circumstance) and letting it bring new things out of you. That's what we saw."
UCLA plays at South Dakota State on Thursday, with Seton Hall and Middle Tennessee in the other semifinal. The WNIT championship tips off at 12 p.m. Saturday with TV coverage on CBS Sports Network.
ASU uses search firm to identify new coach
At its first introductory press conference for a women's basketball coach since June 1996, Arizona State officials emphasized how important they viewed the hire of a replacement for Charli Turner Thorne.
Their choice, Natasha Adair, who was hired away from Delaware, called ASU a "destination job" with a national brand that the 49-year-old aspires to build upon and take even further than Turner Thorne did in 25 seasons (14 NCAA Tournament bids, two Elite Eight appearances).
"We had a very unique set of circumstances," ASU Vice President for Athletics Ray Anderson said. "I wanted to have someone who had experience that would respect the past yet not be intimidated by the 25 years and be able to come in here and really move this program forward."
Adair did not directly follow Terry Williams-Flournoy (eight seasons) at Georgetown but brought that program back to a WNIT level.
At Delaware, she replaced Tina Martin, who won 408 games in 21 seasons. In five seasons under Adair, the Blue Hens went 167-143, playing twice in the WNIT and in the NCAA Tournament this season for the first time since 2013.
Adair joins Arizona's Adia Barnes and California's Charmin Smith to give the Pac-12 three Black women's basketball head coaches. She is ASU's first Black full-time head coach in the sport. (Joseph Anders was interim head coach in 2011-12 when Turner Thorne was on a one-season leave of absence.) She is also a founding member of Black Coaches United.
"I know Charmin and Adia, but I also know Cori Close and Tara VanDerveer," Adair said. "I'm very familiar with the coaches in this league. It's a community. Since I signed on, everyone in the Pac-12 has reached out. That speaks volumes for this conference, just who they are as people.
"It's always great to be in good company. When you have a competitive conference, you can recruit the best student-athletes to perform. When you go into the house and can sell the conference and competitive basketball night in and night out, who wouldn't want to be a part of that."
ASU hired TurnkeyZRG to assist with the search, and vice president Katy Young Staudt, who lives in Phoenix, recruited Adair, whose Delaware team lost March 18 to Maryland in the NCAA first round.
Turner Thorne announced her retirement March 3 after ASU was eliminated from the Pac-12 Tournament.
"We have to get this right," Anderson told his senior staff.
"You get the phone call, and so many things go through your head," Adair said. "I know about all that Charli has done for women's basketball, for this program, the Pac-12. I was elated and really honored.
"When I met with Ray and the members the committee and what I found is their longevity here. People really stay here, and if you're not treated well, you're going to want to get out of here as quick as you can. That really spoke to me that people are invested here."
Adair considers herself to be a "global recruiter" who can transition to recruiting in the West after a playing/coaching career that, until now, was entirely in the East.
She is signing a five-year contract, pending Board of Regents approval.
Jon Wilner's Pac-12 Hotline is brought to KSL.com through a partnership with the Bay Area News Group.
Jeff Metcalfe is a sports writer covering Arizona State University sports and the Olympics for The Arizona Republic and azcentral.com sports, and is a correspondent for the Pac-12 Hotline. You can follow him on Twitter @jeffmetcalfe.
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