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WBB: Beyond the Arc - FarmDad.01 - 01-30-2013

I hope that in the next five games, Greenfield and Samuelson will each log at least 15 minutes. And that plays are designed to let them cut loose from long range. With the Second Season fast approaching, it's time to see if they've regained their confidence and stroke. Having a credible 3-pt threat would sure open up the middle.

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - M T - 01-30-2013

Off this specific topic, but not too far...  On another topic there was mention of Kristin Folkl & Vanessa Nygaard, who both suffered knee injuries just before the disastrous NCAA tournament in '98.  Just to compare shooting then vs shooting now.

Vanessa hit 46.0% of her threes.  Nice, and would be 6th in the NCAA now, behind 50%.  The team hit 39.6% of the threes, which would be 2nd in the NCAA behind 42%.
The team shot 52.1% FG%, easily ahead of Baylor's lead at 50.8%.

But, 6'2" Kristin hit 69.5% of her FGs (123/177), far eclipsing the current NCAA lead at 60.5%.  Absolutely amazing.  Not bad for always coming off the bench.  (I like the story that she was at Stanford for BB camp at age 16.  When she dunked the ball, Amy Tucker put her arm around her and said, "Let's go find Tara."  http://news.stanford.edu/stanfordtoday/ed/9805/9805fea601.shtml)



Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 81alum - 01-30-2013

Maybe you meant this thread?
http://thecardboard.org/board/index.php/topic,7405.msg57258.html#msg57258

I loved your linked article about Folkl.  The gaudy stats of Folkl and Nygaard remind me of how much more defensive the game has become over the fifteen years since they played.  I think I miss the old style of play.

At one game this year I sat next to a retired Stanford Professor and we talked about Folkl.  He had her as a student, apparently, got to know her, and became a devoted fan.  He claimed she was the best Stanford WBB player in our history (not that he was objective!), but of course could not rack up the stats because she spent half of each season playing volleyball.  He had some unkind things to say about the way Folkl was coached, centering primarily on Tara's resentment of Folkl's volleyball commitments.  I followed WBB then but not that closely, so I did not hear that backstory.  Does anyone remember specifically what he was talking about?

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 76lsjumb - 01-31-2013

(01-30-2013, 08:51 PM)81alum link Wrote:At one game this year I sat next to a retired Stanford Professor and we talked about Folkl.  He had her as a student, apparently, got to know her, and became a devoted fan.  He claimed she was the best Stanford WBB player in our history (not that he was objective!), but of course could not rack up the stats because she spent half of each season playing volleyball.  He had some unkind things to say about the way Folkl was coached, centering primarily on Tara's resentment of Folkl's volleyball commitments.  I followed WBB then but not that closely, so I did not hear that backstory.  Does anyone remember specifically what he was talking about?

He's not the only one to think those things [i.e., that Folkl was the best WBB player AND that Tara was a little ... irrational, perhaps ... about how she utilized Kristin].  In 97-98, Kristin had the team's best shooting percentage, was the team's leading rebounder per game, had the highest points per game average, and played in 18 games following the end of volleyball season.  And, oh yeah, Tara started her in exactly ZERO of those games.

Kristin was also one of the only [if not the only] women players I can recall who actually shot a "true" jump shot -- that is, exploding with the legs to get elevation and then using the arms to make the shot -- as opposed to the combined arm/leg push that is generally used by women players.  She did not shoot a lot of 3's, but she had a number of games, as I recall, where she was 7-7 or 7-8 or the like from the floor.

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 81alum - 02-02-2013

I scrounged around in the archives and this is what I found:

In 1997-98 Folkl played in 18 games, started none, averaged 25 minutes.

She shot .695 for a team-leading 19 ppg, and led the team in rebounds with 9.2 rebounds per game.

That said, Olympia Scott and Vanessa Nygaard were also playing exceptionally well that year, so it is not as if this was a team centered on one player to the degree our Chiney-centric team is or even a Nneka team or an Appel team or a Wiggins team.  Folkl may in fact have been our most talented WBB player but she was accompanied by two others who were close behind, and that puts things in a bit more context.

Her numbers certainly were gaudy at times! Against UCLA she was 6/6, Washington 14/18, WSU 9/10, USC 7/8 etc.



Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 76lsjumb - 02-02-2013

(02-02-2013, 08:19 AM)garvin link Wrote:I think Tara was in a more difficult position than you're allowing for. I don't think it's easy to tell a player who busted her butt in practices all through the fall, sorry, none of that means anything now that Kristin's back. And it might not have have played well with other members of the team, either. I know football/baseball two-athletes miss spring practice, but there's some distance between that and when the season starts. And those guys are out there during the really grim part of practice, the two-a-days.

Those are cetainly legitimate arguments, but they're very similar arguments to those made in situations we saw just this season, if you make the following substitutions: Nunes [or Alex Smith] for the unnamed "player who busted her butt...", Hogan [or Kaepernick (sp?) for Folkl, and, of course Shaw [or Harbaugh] for Tara.  On the whole, you would have to say it worked out pretty well for the substituters this season, those arguments notwithstanding.

Moreover, it wasn't as if Folkl had spent the off-season lounging on the beach sipping mai-tais.  I'm pretty sure she was working just as hard before and during volleyball season as the b'ball players were.

Finally, Folkl was an all-around pretty nice person.  We got to know her a little bit at Stanford and, fortuantely, got to talk with her quite a bit again at the St. Louis Final Four.  There may have been some resentment among other players regarding her playing [although I never heard of it], but, if I were on a b'ball team that has a chance to win it all, it seems to me that I could find a way to support the best shooter and rebounder on the team getting a little more playing time [and, indeed, even starting].  Unfortunately, none of those women's b'ball teams ever did win it all.

Finally, I don't think the Tara bias against volleyball players crossing over to b'ball was limited to Folkl.

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 81alum - 02-02-2013

Anyone know if Kailee Johnson, WBB recruit who will be arriving next year, was planning to play volleyball too?  She did in high school--I have know idea how good she is at volleyball and whether it figured into her college decision.

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - BobK - 02-02-2013

WBB practice now starts Sept 15 the 3rd week of Volleyball.  I just can't imagine anyone missing 3 weeks of basketball to play volleyball.  The seasons overlap too much now. 

Johnson is a very good volleyball player.  But will play basketball. 

Yes Liz Brenner of Oregon does both and will also throw the Javelin.  But Oregon basketball is terrible 

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 76lsjumb - 02-02-2013

(02-02-2013, 07:10 PM)garvin link Wrote:If Tara's program was bearing the cost of the scholarship, I can certainly see why she would resent a player missing the first six weeks of the season to play volleyball. And I really don't see the remotest parallel to Josh Nunes here. Nunes lost his job to a guy who was at practice all along, competing fulltime for a football job.

Moreover, it's not as if Tara made Folkl sit on the bench. She didn't start, that's all. And, I'd guess, in a number of those games she didn't start, she wasn't in basketball shape yet. I don't question that volleyball players train and practice hard, but it's a different sport with different demands.

The parallel I see with Josh Nunes is that Shaw decided to play the best player, even though it arguably wasn't "fair" to the player who was being replaced.  Going with the best player gives the team the best chance to win and, ultimately, I think a good argument can be made that what is best for the team is the preferable decision.

If Tara decided to go with another player over Kristin at the time because she thought that gave the team the best chance to win, that's great.  If she did it because she "resented" the fact that Kristin was playing volleyball while on a besketball scholarship, I'm not so sure. 

It wasn't Kristin's fault that the scholarship was counted toward b'ball -- that's simply an NCAA rule.  And it wasn't Kristin's fault that, at least to that point, she was arguably one of the [if not THE] most dominant volleyball players Stanford had ever seen and was instrumental in winning multiple NCAA volleyball titles for Stanford.  As a fan of multiple sports at Stanford, I'm a lot happier that we won 3 volleyball titles while she was at Stanford than I would have been if we hadn't, and I would have been happier still if we had managed to win a basketball title as well while she was here.

This is from the official Stanford Hall of Fame bio on Kristin:

Arguably the greatest women's athlete in Stanford history, Kristin Folkl earned first-team All-America honors in both volleyball and basketball during her collegiate career on The Farm. She joined the basketball team midway through the season of her freshman year in 1994-95 and earned a spot on the Pacific-10 Conference's All-Freshmen team. She did not play basketball as a sophomore in order to devote time to the U.S. Olympic women's volleyball team. After initially announcing she would not play basketball as a junior, Folkl rejoined an injury-riddled Cardinal team for the final 10 games of the 1996-97 season, helping Stanford to a NCAA Final Four appearance. As a senior in 1997-98, she earned a spot on the Kodak All-America team and was a finalist for Naismith Player of the Year honors after averaging 18.9 points and 9.2 rebounds a game.

That is consistent with my memory of things -- i.e., Kristin did a lot for the basketball team; it wasn't that Tara was doing a favor to Kristin to let her play.  And, while I haven't done [and don't really intend to do] the research to go back and try to figure out the specific games, I have a fairly clear recollection of at least a few games where there was a feeling [expressed by more than a few at the time, including, perhaps, the Stanford Professor referenced by 81alum] that, had Kristin started and/or played more, the team's overall performance in those games would have been improved.

More broadly, I think it is fairly well known that Tara frowns upon women's b'ball players being two-sport athletes.  Over the years, I think that attitude has negatively impacted some of the other teams [and, maybe even the b'ball team] by rendering unavailable some players who were in a position to make positive contributions to those teams.  That being said, I do agree that, more recently, as the concept of "season" seems to be disappearing for most sports -- i.e., sport-specific practice and training now seems to go on year-round and actual competition seasons overlap more -- insisting that a player devote full time to the scholarship sport seems more and more reasonable.

For Kristin, though, I don't think that it was matter of not playing due to not being in "basketball shape."  She was, quite simply, a phenomenal athlete who was clearly in shape to do whatever she was allowed to do -- and to do it well enough to be voted All-Conference and All-American multiple times in both sports.


Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 81alum - 02-03-2013

In any case, one way or the other, at the end of the day, when all is said and done.....

....Folkl was very good.

Re: WBB: Beyond the Arc - 76lsjumb - 02-03-2013

(02-03-2013, 07:16 AM)garvin link Wrote:1. Not remotely the same thing. Nunes and Hogan were out there during all the same dog-day practices, and everybody knew it.

2. I am not necessarily defending the proposition that it wouldn't have been "fair" to start Folkl over somebody who was there for all the practices and the non-conference games. But if some of the other players felt that way, Tara would have had to had to deal with it. Not starting Folkl, while giving her plenty of playing time, strikes me as a good way to do that.

3. In what way did this hurt the team? Folk's decision to play volleyball means that, essentially, she was only available for the conference portion of the basketball season. Stanford won the conference championship in all three years she was on the team, and lost a total of only six conference games. Even if some of those six losses can be definitively proven to be the result of Folkl not starting (count me dubious on that score), they were meaningless.

garvin -- Hey... I'm not looking to start WWIII over this.  In fact, I simply posted my thoughts in response to 81alum's question regarding the "backstory" on Folkl and women's b'ball, mostly to point out that the story told by that Stanford Professor was not solely a figment of that professor's imagination. 

Two more points and then I'm done:  Maybe I'm misinterpreting your point, but the argument about Kristin not being part of the early practices as a justification for starting and/or playing others who were just doesn't add up to me.  First, as noted, she was clearly involved in her own [i.e., volleyball] dog-day practices.  I would guess there were a number of players on the team --indeed, on most teams -- who worked very, very, very hard in praactices and didn't get to start [or, indeed, even play much] because there were other players on the team who were better.

Second,  I did not say [because I really don't remember at this point] that any of the losses directly resulted from the way Kristin was utilized in the games.  However, as folks on this Board are wont to do with respect to analyzing games all the time, I felt that there were games that we won in which the team would have been better served -- or, otherwise put, the victory would have been easier and/or the winning margin greater -- had Kristin been playing.  Indeed, on the men's side, one of the favorite Board sports this season has been criticizing Dawkins' substitution patterns, even in games we have won.

I'll just leave it at concurring with 81alum's most recent post [with only one small quibble -- would put a "very" in front of good.]  Now I'm off to see the President's brother-in-law...