GK, we may not or we may. It depends on how well we do the rest of the way. After beating Florida State the consensus was we were in the last 4 in, and I doubt that losing to #19 will knock us down. But we need to defeat the teams we are supposed to defeat--like Wake Forest--and knock off another good team or two--like Cal--and get up above 18 wins or so. At this point the odds of that happening are no better than 50/50.
This is now and will probably remain the weakest season for Stanford WBB since Tara's second year of coaching. Much later in her career Tara had an 18-12 season in 98-99 and lost in the 1st round. I would be impressed if we could equal that. But given the massive changes happening I think this season is more comparable to Tara's initial two years. She went 13-15 and then 14-14 and did not make the tournament either year. After those two years it took her 3 more to win her first natty, each year progressing further in the tournament.
So to answer your question, the last time we did not make the tournament was 1987.
All of us are disappointed. But let's be sure we direct our concern in the right direction. This has almost nothing to do with the motivation of our players or the quality of our coaching. We have 4 WNBA players on our coaching staff. They know a thing or two about basketball and player development. No, it has everything to do with the corruption of college athletics by money and the destruction of ethical standards that have come with the gross weakening of the NCAA.
Kiki Iriafen would still be leading our team were it not for USC's ability to buy her out with $800,000--something unimaginable when we still attempted to say that college sports was an amateur activity. (And let's not forget that WE developed her. She was a somewhat mediocre forward for her first year or two. And now a different team can cash in on her.) Lauren Betts would still be a Stanford player in another era too. And many of the teams we play against (though not North Carolina State) would be much weaker were it not for their ability to hire players away from the minor leagues of mid majors, with all the player development being contracted out to others. We would be in a very different place if intercollegiate athletics understood that transferring is disruptive to academic success and that the primary purpose of an academy is academics. But we seem to have lost the ethical battle for college athletics, and are attempting to compete against those who embrace the new slime.
Stanford always had higher academic and ethical standards than much of its competition (yes there was an OLD slime too), and that is the primary reason I love Stanford athletics. But the new rules are making it much, much harder to be competitive while upholding elite academic values. And no coach--none--would have an easy time with that at Stanford.
Sadly, we may need to measure our success in other ways than we are used to, given that the most fundamental rules of the game have changed.
This is now and will probably remain the weakest season for Stanford WBB since Tara's second year of coaching. Much later in her career Tara had an 18-12 season in 98-99 and lost in the 1st round. I would be impressed if we could equal that. But given the massive changes happening I think this season is more comparable to Tara's initial two years. She went 13-15 and then 14-14 and did not make the tournament either year. After those two years it took her 3 more to win her first natty, each year progressing further in the tournament.
So to answer your question, the last time we did not make the tournament was 1987.
All of us are disappointed. But let's be sure we direct our concern in the right direction. This has almost nothing to do with the motivation of our players or the quality of our coaching. We have 4 WNBA players on our coaching staff. They know a thing or two about basketball and player development. No, it has everything to do with the corruption of college athletics by money and the destruction of ethical standards that have come with the gross weakening of the NCAA.
Kiki Iriafen would still be leading our team were it not for USC's ability to buy her out with $800,000--something unimaginable when we still attempted to say that college sports was an amateur activity. (And let's not forget that WE developed her. She was a somewhat mediocre forward for her first year or two. And now a different team can cash in on her.) Lauren Betts would still be a Stanford player in another era too. And many of the teams we play against (though not North Carolina State) would be much weaker were it not for their ability to hire players away from the minor leagues of mid majors, with all the player development being contracted out to others. We would be in a very different place if intercollegiate athletics understood that transferring is disruptive to academic success and that the primary purpose of an academy is academics. But we seem to have lost the ethical battle for college athletics, and are attempting to compete against those who embrace the new slime.
Stanford always had higher academic and ethical standards than much of its competition (yes there was an OLD slime too), and that is the primary reason I love Stanford athletics. But the new rules are making it much, much harder to be competitive while upholding elite academic values. And no coach--none--would have an easy time with that at Stanford.
Sadly, we may need to measure our success in other ways than we are used to, given that the most fundamental rules of the game have changed.