[TheFarm07]

Agree with much of what has already been said, but just wanted to add two more things:

1. Recruiting. This has been rehashed to death, but we haven't had a top 5 recruit since Chiney. I have no idea what recruiting was like in the early 90s, but starting in the early 2000s we had a series of top 5 recruits (I know Wiggins, Appel, Pedersen, Nneka and Chiney were all around top 5; I think Powell was right around 5 too?).

Given the lopsided nature of the women's game, one or two top-5 recruits can be the difference maker. It's notable that UConn's brief "down" period in the early 2010s was at the end of the Moore era and and before the start of the Stewwie/Mo/Tuck era when UConn had its weakest recruiting classes it's had in well over a decade - after Delle Donne transferred, UConn had no top ten recruits in the 2008 or 2009 classes, and, no surprise, UConn failed to take home the national title when those classes were upperclassmen in 2011 and 2012. Armed with three top 6 recruits, UConn then ran off 4 titles in a row.

We've had a few close to top ten (I think McCall was 11, and Beebe was around 11 also but never got to play), but this year we got our first top ten recruit since Chiney in Williams, and Dodson is so close (11) as to be the same. Still, they aren't yet contributing the way Megan Walker (no. 1) at Uconn and Evina Westbrook (no. 2) at Tennessee are.

2. We don't have our star player. McPhee is our leading scorer, go-to playmaker, and was on the regional final all-tournament team and the All-Pac-12 last spring. She's arguably more instrumental to our team than any single player since Cheney, given our lack of upperclass scoring. We've been the lower seed against UConn, Ohio State (x2) and Baylor, and without McPhee, there's even less reason to think we should win those games, all away from home. That doesn't fully explain some soft performances against midling competition, but I think we underestimate her absence.

We've had this conversation before in previous threads, so I won't rehash everything, but for me, it's disappointing that our success in the Appel to Ogwumike years hasn't translated into HS girls' basketball players being inspired to want to play for Tara and excel in high school to get the grades and qualifications to be admitted. We have seen how Harbaugh's transformation of the football program has enticed more HS football players to want to play for Stanford. Because of our strict academic requirements, we will always have a smaller pool to work with, no matter how successful our programs are, but from my perspective, there wasn't even a noticeable increase in interest after our remarkable period of dominance (second only to UConn in the late '00s and early '10s) in the women's team.

Though Erica and Maya were on the cusp of top-10 rankings, Kiana was our first Top-10 recruit in SEVEN years since Chiney chose us. We came close to Katie Lou and I wonder how different our season would be this year if we had her leading the team and taking some heat off of our younger players (though it might have been a repeat of the '12-13 season, where it was Chiney and not much else). Most years, not one top-10 recruit usually has us on their short list.

I'm not trying to diminish the still awesome recruits we have (having multiple HS McDonald's All-Americans at the same time is no small feat) and our talent level is still above most other schools, but as my post in the other thread shows, it seems like you need multiple Top-10 recruits to legitimately compete for a national crown.

I think the difference the last few years too is that we are also much more vulnerable to losing to teams we would have handedly beat during the Appel-Ogwumike years (Gonzaga, Santa Clara, Arizona...)

[TheFarm07]

Agree with much of what has already been said, but just wanted to add two more things:

1. Recruiting. This has been rehashed to death, but we haven't had a top 5 recruit since Chiney. I have no idea what recruiting was like in the early 90s, but starting in the early 2000s we had a series of top 5 recruits (I know Wiggins, Appel, Pedersen, Nneka and Chiney were all around top 5; I think Powell was right around 5 too?).

Given the lopsided nature of the women's game, one or two top-5 recruits can be the difference maker. It's notable that UConn's brief "down" period in the early 2010s was at the end of the Moore era and and before the start of the Stewwie/Mo/Tuck era when UConn had its weakest recruiting classes it's had in well over a decade - after Delle Donne transferred, UConn had no top ten recruits in the 2008 or 2009 classes, and, no surprise, UConn failed to take home the national title when those classes were upperclassmen in 2011 and 2012. Armed with three top 6 recruits, UConn then ran off 4 titles in a row.

We've had a few close to top ten (I think McCall was 11, and Beebe was around 11 also but never got to play), but this year we got our first top ten recruit since Chiney in Williams, and Dodson is so close (11) as to be the same. Still, they aren't yet contributing the way Megan Walker (no. 1) at Uconn and Evina Westbrook (no. 2) at Tennessee are.

2. We don't have our star player. McPhee is our leading scorer, go-to playmaker, and was on the regional final all-tournament team and the All-Pac-12 last spring. She's arguably more instrumental to our team than any single player since Cheney, given our lack of upperclass scoring. We've been the lower seed against UConn, Ohio State (x2) and Baylor, and without McPhee, there's even less reason to think we should win those games, all away from home. That doesn't fully explain some soft performances against midling competition, but I think we underestimate her absence.

We've had this conversation before in previous threads, so I won't rehash everything, but for me, it's disappointing that our success in the Appel to Ogwumike years hasn't translated into HS girls' basketball players being inspired to want to play for Tara and excel in high school to get the grades and qualifications to be admitted. We have seen how Harbaugh's transformation of the football program has enticed more HS football players to want to play for Stanford. Because of our strict academic requirements, we will always have a smaller pool to work with, no matter how successful our programs are, but from my perspective, there wasn't even a noticeable increase in interest after our remarkable period of dominance (second only to UConn in the late '00s and early '10s) in the women's team.

Though Erica and Maya were on the cusp of top-10 rankings, Kiana was our first Top-10 recruit in SEVEN years since Chiney chose us. We came close to Katie Lou and I wonder how different our season would be this year if we had her leading the team and taking some heat off of our younger players (though it might have been a repeat of the '12-13 season, where it was Chiney and not much else). Most years, not one top-10 recruit usually has us on their short list.

I'm not trying to diminish the still awesome recruits we have (having multiple HS McDonald's All-Americans at the same time is no small feat) and our talent level is still above most other schools, but as my post in the other thread shows, it seems like you need multiple Top-10 recruits to legitimately compete for a national crown.

I think the difference the last few years too is that we are also much more vulnerable to losing to teams we would have handedly beat during the Appel-Ogwumike years (Gonzaga, Santa Clara, Arizona...)