SAN ANTONIO – Tara VanDerveer hugged each of his Stanford players as they climbed the ladder to cut the nets, crowning a turbulent and tiring journey and ending an exhaustive championship drought for the Cardinal.
It took 29 years, including 10 weeks on the road this season because of the coronavirus, for VanDerveer and Cardinal to be crowned NCAA women’s basketball champions again.
“We had special karma for ourselves,” said VanDerveer. “There was a comeback against Louisville, dodge a bullet against South Carolina, dodge a bullet against Arizona. Sometimes you have to be lucky. I’ll admit, we were very lucky to win. “
Haley Jones scored 17 points and Stanford beat Arizona 54-53, giving the Cardinal and Hall of Fame coach his first national championship since 1992 on Sunday night.
“Going through all the things we went through, we are excited to win the COVID championship,” said VanDerveer. ”The other was not so close, the last. But we are very excited. Nobody knows the score, nobody knows who scored, it is a national championship. “
It was not a masterpiece at all, with both teams struggling to score and losing layups and easy kicks, but Stanford did just enough to get the win – it’s the second followed by a point.
Stanford (31-2) built a nine-point lead in the fourth period before Arizona (21-6) reduced it to 51-50 on the 3-point armor star Aari McDonald’s.
After a timeout, Jones responded with a three-point play with 2:24 to go. That would be the last basket in Stanford’s game. McDonald hit the Wildcats with 54-53 with 36.6 seconds remaining, converting three of the four free throws.
“I owe everything to my teammates, they trust me when I have no confidence in myself,” said Jones, who was honored as the tournament’s most outstanding player. “I saw that they needed me to grow and I did.”
The cardinal, after another timeout, failed to even get a shot, giving Arizona one last chance with 6.1 seconds remaining, but McDonald’s contested shot from the top of the key in the doorbell bounced off the edge.
“I was strongly denied. I tried to turn the corner, they sent me three. I took a difficult and contested shot and he didn’t fall, ”said McDonald, who fell near the middle of the court, collapsed in disbelief as the Cardinal celebrated.
It’s been quite a journey for both VanDerveer and Cardinal this season. The team was forced to travel for almost 10 weeks because of the coronavirus, spending 86 days in hotels during this nomadic season.
“It was a long and very difficult journey to be on the road, to sleep in hotels, to live what you need. Is very. You’re on the bus, you’re on airplanes all the time and there’s never an end in sight, so it’s difficult, “said Jones.
“But I think with that experience and losing on the road and losing one at home, I think that extra has really grown like a chip on our shoulder.”
The team didn’t complain and went back to work and now they have another NCAA championship. Along the way, the Hall of Fame coach won her 1,099th career victory, overtaking Pat Summitt for the last time in women’s basketball history.
Now, the 67-year-old coach has a third national title, along with the ones she won in 1990 and 1992. This led her to tie with Baylor’s Kim Mulkey for the third time ever, behind Geno Auriemma and Summitt.
VanDerveer had many excellent teams between the titles, including those led by Candice Wiggins and sisters Ogwumike – Nneka and Chiney, but the Cardinal simply couldn’t end his season with that elusive title win until Sunday night.
It was the first women’s basketball championship for the Pac-12 since VanDerveer and Stanford won the title in 1992. The last time a conference team was in the title game was in 2010, when Cardinal lost to UConn. That game was also played at the Alamodome – the location of all games in this tournament, from Sweet 16 to Sunday’s championship game.
The entire NCAA tournament was played in the San Antonio area because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
While Stanford had history on his side, Arizona was growing under the command of coach Adia Barnes, who was the fourth black woman to lead his team to the championship game, joining Carolyn Peck, Dawn Staley and C. Vivian Stringer. Peck and Staley won titles.
Barnes starred in the Wildcats as a player in the late 1990s and returned to her alma mater five years ago. She guided the team to the WNIT title in 2019 and took them to the first NCAA title game of all time. This was the team’s first appearance at the NCAA Tournament since 2005 – although the Wildcats would have made it to the NCAAs last season had it not been canceled by the coronavirus.
McDonald, who followed his Washington coach during a transfer, was a big reason for the team’s success. The 1.5-meter-high guard fought the cardinal, finishing with 22 points and throwing 5 out of 20 on the field.
The Wildcats were trying to be only the fourth team to lose by double digits and win a championship.
These teams met twice during the regular season and Stanford overtook Arizona twice, winning double digits in each game.
This was a final chance for the Wildcats, but they were only one point short.