As the Stanford women’s basketball team prepares for the 2022-23 season, the Cardinal are starting it in a familiar place: just behind South Carolina.
The Cardinal came in at No. 2 in the preseason AP Top 25 poll, which was released on Tuesday. While the defending national champion Gamecocks are the unanimous choice for the top spot, tallying 750 poll points with all 30 first-place votes, Stanford has a good distance between itself (710) and the third-ranked Texas (650).
The placement makes a lot of sense for a Stanford team returning nearly every key contributor from last season’s Final Four team, which ascended to the second spot in the AP Poll in mid-December last season and stayed there for the rest of the regular season. And most of their top players were major parts of their 2021 national championship, too.
As head coach Tara VanDerveer begins her 37th season in charge at Stanford, she’ll rely heavily on senior Haley Jones, a Mitty alum who is also two-time AP All-American and was the 2021 NCAA Final Four Most Outstanding Player. She averaged 13.2 points and 7.9 rebounds per game and after leading Stanford with 3.7 assists per game last season.
Jones won the Pac-12 Player of the Year title from the coaches last season, while junior forward Cameron Brink won the media’s nod. Brink, who was the Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year for both, led the Cardinal with 13.5 points, 8.1 rebounds and 2.6 blocks per game.
Jones and Brink didn’t get their showdown with consensus national player of the year Aliyah Boston in last year’s national championship game, getting knocked out by UConn and junior Paige Bueckers in the Final Four. They will face Boston and the Gamecocks again in the regular season this year, when South Carolina comes to Stanford for a nationally-televised showdown on ABC on Sunday, Nov. 20 at noon.
Stanford will also host No. 5 Tennessee on Sunday, Dec. 18 at noon in another game broadcasted on ABC. The Cardinal will then host No. 21 Creighton two days later to wrap up nonconference play.
The Pac-12 had three teams ranked in the preseason Top 25, with Arizona coming in at No. 19 and Oregon one spot behind the Wildcats at No. 20. It’s two fewer than the conference had last season, though Utah and UCLA were the first two teams outside of the Top 25 in the “receiving votes” category in this year’s poll.
UConn came in at No. 6 in the poll, in part because Bueckers will miss the entire season after she tore her ACL during a pickup game in the late summer. It’s the first time since 2006 that the Huskies haven’t opened the season in the top five. Bueckers, Brink and Iowa guard Caitlin Clark are considered the top three juniors in the country, while Boston and Jones are the consensus one-two (in order) among seniors.
Stanford will begin its season on Monday, Nov. 7 by hosting San Diego State at 7 p.m.
Source: www.mercurynews.com