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WBB: All Time Team - Lorcan - 10-25-2019

Who would you pick for your all time team?

PG: Jennifer Azzi
SG: Candice Wiggins
SF: Nicole Powell
PF: Nneka Ogwumike 
C: Jayne Appel

Bench:

Kayla Pedersen
Sonja Henning
Jeanette Pohlen


Who would you pick for your all time team for the Cardinal?

RE: WBB: All Time Team - TheFarm07 - 10-25-2019

I was just thinking about this.

I didn't watch Stanford wbb before 2003-04-ish, so I can't speak to the players from the 1990s, but Chiney would be on the bench as well, eh?

RE: WBB: All Time Team - PalmTree - 10-25-2019

(10-25-2019, 04:39 PM)TheFarm07 Wrote:  I was just thinking about this.

I didn't watch Stanford wbb before 2003-04-ish, so I can't speak to the players from the 1990s, but Chiney would be on the bench as well, eh?

For players from the 90s, I'd say Kate Starbird (phenomenal scorer) and maybe Val Whiting (a real force inside, offensively and defensively).  Otherwise, yeah....Chiney!

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 81alum - 10-25-2019

Here are 12.  I've put an asterisk by my starting five, but I'm sure I am forgetting someone great and it is already agonizing to choose from among them.  How do you not start Jayne?  Folkl with the highest percentage of any player?  How to choose between Starbird, Powell, and Nygaard?  Impossible.  And the craziest choice of all....Azzi vs. Wiggins?  It makes me cringe to have to choose.  For point guard I have to go with Sonja Henning, who not only had the best season for assists, but also the second best, and also the most assists per game. I guess I could cheat and put Azzi or Wiggins in the pg role, since they were better all around players, but Henning was significantly better in the pure point guard role.

*Chiney Ogwumike
*Nneka Ogwumike
Jayne Appel
Kristin Folkl

*Kate Starbird
Nicole Powell
Vanessa Nygaard

Jeanette Pohlen
Karlie Samuleson
Jennifer Azzi
*Candice Wiggins
*Sonja Henning pg

RE: WBB: All Time Team - BobK - 10-25-2019

I have to add Alanna Smith and Val Whiting to 81s list. Great list 81

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 81alum - 10-25-2019

(10-25-2019, 05:43 PM)BobK Wrote:  I have to add Alanna Smith and Val Whiting to 81s list.  Great list 81
Yes, I thought about them.  That would bring the list to 14. 

We still have one scholarship left!  Who would be your fifteenth, then, Bob?  Kayla Pedersen? Trish Stevens?  Do we go way back to the pre-Tara era and put Jeanne Ruark Hoff there?  Brooke Smith?  Rappahan or Suminki with their +400 three point shooting?

RE: WBB: All Time Team - mbdude - 10-25-2019

(10-25-2019, 04:18 PM)Lorcan Wrote:  Who would you pick for your all time team?

PG: Jennifer Azzi
SG: Candice Wiggins
SF: Nicole Powell
PF: Nneka Ogwumike 
C: Jayne Appel

Bench:

Kayla Pedersen
Sonja Henning
Jeanette Pohlen


Who would you pick for your all time team for the Cardinal?
Same as above but add Smith and Harmon (because she's my fav)

RE: WBB: All Time Team - BobK - 10-25-2019

Hard to leave off Harmon. Yes add Brooke the Hook

RE: WBB: All Time Team - BostonCard - 10-25-2019

True point guard is the one position where we don’t have an overwhelming history of all time players.  There’s Henning, but I think it says something that Jennifer Azzi has three of the all time top 7 assists season in Stanford history.  In terms of true point guards behind Henning, there’s Orrange, Wideman, and Flores, but you’d be fogiven if you just put Azzi at point or played Nicole Powell as “point forward”, and I like Amber and Jamilla,  but they’d be hard to put on an all time team.

So here’s my team:
PG: Azzi/Henning
Sg: Wiggins/Starbird
SF: Powell/Pederson
PF: N. Ogwumike/Folkl
C: Appel/Whiting

I just realized my starting five mirrored the original poster’s.  And how does a list like this omit Chinney, Brook Smith, Alana Smith, Nygaard, Pohlen, plus a couple before my time (Hoff and Trisha Stevens, who are 8th and 10th in the all time career scoring list at Stanford), Suminski, Samuelson, Sebnem Kimyacioglu (three of the top six point shooters in Stanford history), not to mention some of the all time gut and glue players like Rosalyn Gold-Onwude.

BC

RE: WBB: All Time Team - Lorcan - 10-26-2019

Right? It’s so hard to leave off some of these players. The reason why I gave Azzi the nod over Henning came down to her three point shooting prowess. 

While I fully admit that I’m not as familiar with the players in the 90’s, it’s hard for me to pass up on players who iced games, such as Amber Orrange’s three against UConn or  Pohlen’s 4.4 Seconds. 

I also wonder what kind of offense Tara would have such a team run. Whether she’d stick to the triangle or implement the Princeton. 

There are some players who have had more pro success than they did in college, Jillian Harmon being the prime example. Her longevity and valuable performances in Italy do make it difficult to leave her off.

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 81alum - 10-26-2019

Another way to do this is to look at the 11 in the Stanford Athletics Hall of Fame.  I'm not sure how the rules work--the Ogwumikes, Smith, Pederson, Pohlen, Samuelson, etc. must be too recent to be eligible.  Nygaard is not in there, though.

I wonder why everyone seems to put Nneka in front of Chiney on their teams, or even leaves Chiney off?  Chiney was the better rebounder, better percentage, more points per game, and more career points.  And she did it with less help than Nneka had.  Or maybe you could argue that she has more records because she had less competition from her teammates for the stats?  Hard for me to separate those two.



RE: WBB: All Time Team - TheFarm07 - 10-26-2019

(10-26-2019, 11:11 AM)81alum Wrote:  I wonder why everyone seems to put Nneka in front of Chiney on their teams, or even leaves Chiney off?  Chiney was the better rebounder, better percentage, more points per game, and more career points.  And she did it with less help than Nneka had.  Or maybe you could argue that she has more records because she had less competition from her teammates for the stats?  Hard for me to separate those two.

Chiney definitely should not be off the all-time team. She is definitely in the pantheon of all-time Stanford greats, not just in basketball, but across the athletics program, IMHO.

However, given that, I would put Nneka ahead of Chiney. I would argue that Chiney's total statistics are due to a weaker team around her. I think we saw in her last two years after Nneka graduated, it became the Chiney show, especially her junior year. In her senior year, other players began to emerge, such as Ruef's sensational last season and Lili's big splash as a freshman, but I remember a lot of times, the offense would devolve into feeding Chiney the ball while the other four players became too reliant on her, leading to turnovers when Chiney was double or sometimes even tripled team and someone would still tried to feed her the ball.

You could argue the opposing point as well, that despite opposing defenses' focus on her, she put up great numbers as well and my opinion that Nneka should be ahead of Chiney in no way diminishes my viewpoint that Chiney did extraordinary things. It would be incredibly hard to choose between them and if I had to, I would pick Nneka, but that's certainly nothing against Chiney.

But I remember some of Nneka's extraordinary games, such as her 38 pts/16 rbds in the national semis against Oklahoma, her 42/17 line against Tennessee her senior year and her ability to face up against Griner in the '12 semis and use her athleticism to evade and score against Brittney as still incredible, all-time performances against top level competition.

I also am somewhat influenced, even though we are strictly talking about their collegiate careers, about what the two have done in the WNBA career. Unfortunately, Chiney's have been hampered by injuries, so it's not completely fair. Nneka's 2016 MVP season was insane with a 19.7/9.1 line and leading the league with a 66.5% shooting percentage.

RE: WBB: All Time Team - jonnyss - 10-27-2019

(10-25-2019, 10:54 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  True point guard is the one position where we don’t have an overwhelming history of all time players.  There’s Henning, but I think it says something that Jennifer Azzi has three of the all time top 7 assists season in Stanford history.  In terms of true point guards behind Henning, there’s Orrange, Wideman, and Flores, but you’d be fogiven if you just put Azzi at point or played Nicole Powell as “point forward”, and I like Amber and Jamilla,  but they’d be hard to put on an all time team.

So here’s my team:
PG: Azzi/Henning
Sg: Wiggins/Starbird
SF: Powell/Pederson
PF: N. Ogwumike/Folkl
C: Appel/Whiting

I just realized my starting five mirrored the original poster’s.  And how does a list like this omit Chinney, Brook Smith, Alana Smith, Nygaard, Pohlen, plus a couple before my time (Hoff and Trisha Stevens, who are 8th and 10th in the all time career scoring list at Stanford), Suminski, Samuelson, Sebnem Kimyacioglu (three of the top six point shooters in Stanford history), not to mention some of the all time gut and glue players like Rosalyn Gold-Onwude.

BC

i second your 10 best players. 

the team is a bit lopsided in terms of position: powell and pederson were post players at stanford, not wings. and kate was a 3. so we have 3 guards, 1 wing, and 6 posts. but that's ok; the best are the best.

and let's not forget lindsay yamasaki. she was an amazing talent who didn't have much of a supporting cast.

RE: WBB: All Time Team - BostonCard - 10-27-2019

Well, given that Powell could conceivably play any of the five positions, and actually did play 1-4, calling her a 3 is not too crazy.

Yamasaki, like Ros, would qualify as a gut and glue player.

BC

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 2006alum - 10-28-2019

These are fun lists and lots of great thoughts. Just to add a few of my own to the mix:

-I share the view that Powell was so positionless that there's going to be a quibble wherever you put her, and the 3 position acknowledges her prowess both shooting long distance and also around the paint. 

-Whether you want to call her position as being a "wing" or a "shooting forward," Pedersen largely played the 3 position at Stanford because she was behind a series of even more post-like posts (Appel, Nneka, and Chiney). Indeed, note that this Merc article from 2010 explicitly stated, "Pedersen, who has moved from power forward to wing, is willing to step outside her personality to help the team. She has done everything coaches have asked in three years at Stanford." Indeed, I think Pedersen doesn't get enough credit precisely because she played out of position for most of her Stanford career, and did it exceptionally well. And she had three-point shooting that all of Appel, Nneka, and Chiney lacked at Stanford (Nneka didn't master her trey until well into her time in the W), so she did, in that sense, perform the tasks of a wing/3 player.

I wasn't old enough to observe the Azzi/Starbird/Whiting/Henning years firsthand, so I don't feel qualified to say where I'd place them, but of the bunch, it's telling to me that Azzi got Tara her first championship and had the most esteemed post-college career, and given the lack of true point guards, she seems the obvious pick at the 1. (Though note that Henning's assists stats seem to suggest she played the true point role either more often, or more capably, than Azzi. And as someone else mentioned, it's striking that all of our single-season assists records have stood for the better part of 20-30 years.)

The other axis to think about this on is who dominated in a given season. On that basis, I don't see how you don't start Azzi, Wiggins, and Chiney - the former two both won the Wade Trophy, and the latter won the Wooden, both of which are awards for the year's top college player in the country. I think revisionist history views Nneka more favorably than Chiney because she's become a more well-rounded and dominant pro, but in college Chiney's best seasons were better than Nneka's. And yes, part of that may be due to Chiney not sharing the court with another equally capable big the way that Nneka did first with Appel and then with her sis, but when you start doing these "all-time" lists you have to go based on the player's actual performance because it gets too hard to play counter-factuals with who might have done what had so-and-so been on their team (or not on their team) at the time.

Appel was probably one of the best suited for Tara's triangle offense and what she did she did exceptionally well. However, she was not as versatile as either peak Nneka or peak Chiney, so personally, I would not start her over either of them. But she'd be first off the bench.

So I think I basically share BC's list except I'd start Chiney over Appel. And I think Alanna Smith needs to at least be in the conversation, because she was at least as good as Pedersen and at least as versatile. She took longer to peak than Pedersen did, but if I had to ask myself who I'd want back more next season, senior year Pedersen or senior year Smith, it'd be Smith for me, and it wouldn't be close.

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 81alum - 10-28-2019

I do agree that Chiney was ever so slightly the better college player than Nneka.  But even there I am wracked with doubt.  Nneka has a slightly better sophomore season than Chiney did, Chiney had a better freshman season than Nneka.  And one might argue that comparing their sophomore seasons is the most apples-to-apples comparison, since Nneka was playing with Jayne and then Chiney with Nneka, in supporting role as it were.

Pedersen is such an interesting player.  She came in seemingly fully formed.  Her ppg, rpg, and shooting percentage were excellent her freshman year and she started every game as a freshman.  But she did not get a whole lot better in future years.  Freshman year she played more at her natural position and I did feel that she was underutilized after that year--so maybe keeping up her production when out of position was indeed her improvement.  Her three point shooting, however, took a nosedive her senior year.  She and Lindy are two players who each had great three point shooting earlier on and lost the touch later.  So yes, I would take Smith's senior year over Pedersen's.  And Pedersen's junior year over Smith's.

RE: WBB: All Time Team - jonnyss - 10-28-2019

(10-27-2019, 10:55 PM)BostonCard Wrote:  Yamasaki, like Ros, would qualify as a gut and glue player.

BC
lindsay averaged 17.2 points per game her senior year. by comparison, ros averaged 6.9, and kayla averaged 12.9 their senior years. alanna averaged 19.4.

RE: WBB: All Time Team - BobK - 10-28-2019

Lindsay certainly was outstanding. Far far more than a glue player

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 81alum - 10-28-2019

(10-28-2019, 08:42 AM)BobK Wrote:  Lindsay certainly was outstanding.  Far far more than a glue player
Outstanding enough to give her a scholie as one of the 15 on the all-time team?  Who then do we take off?

Isn't it great to have a team with such a terrific history that even choosing 15 players is an exercise in agony?

RE: WBB: All Time Team - 81alum - 12-16-2020

Since we had another thread going on this subject, I thought I would bump this.