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RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - martyup - 12-15-2024

Despite two consecutive disappointing losses, Stanford is back to #1 in 3 point shooting percentage.  FEAR THE ThREE!!

https://www.ncaa.com/stats/basketball-women/d1/current/team/118

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - MV72018 - 12-15-2024

(12-15-2024, 09:03 PM)martyup Wrote:  Despite two consecutive disappointing losses, Stanford is back to #1 in 3 point shooting percentage.  FEAR THE ThREE!!

https://www.ncaa.com/stats/basketball-women/d1/current/team/118

Some context: in the games against our three strongest opponents to date -- Indiana, LSU, and Cal -- Stanford made 20 three-point shots out of 58 attempts. In our other seven games, Stanford made 75 three-point shots out of 164 attempts. So, our best-in-the-nation percentage of three-point shots made -- 42.79% -- stems from what we did against our seven weakest opponents. Specifically, against those seven, we made 45.7% of our three-ball attempts, whereas against the three best opponents we've played to date, we made only 34.4% of our trey attempts. As the average caliber of opponent is highly likely to be higher in ACC competition than it was in our pre-conference games, I would guess that our percentage of successful trey attempts will gradually decrease over time.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - M T - 12-16-2024

Welcome to NCAA basketball.  

Most of the teams in the sports-priority conferences schedule the majority of their pre-season games against teams from the weaker conferences, resulting in better records and stats at the beginning of the season.   Only the teams that feel assured that they will go far in their NC tournaments risk toss-up games at the beginning of the season (for example, Stanford WVB this year).
 
For instance:
LSU's first 10 opponents RPIs (sorted by RPI)
77, 116, 124, 138, 182, 188, 252, 281, 325, 330

Stanford's first 10 opponents
13, 28, 44, 104, 162, 165, 221, 263, 316, 339

LSU had only played 1 team in the top 110 while Stanford has played 4.  LSU must really be piling on the stats....

So, yes, Stanford's stats will drop off, but so will those of pretty much everyone in the major conferences.   It's nice to have a good 3FG%, but I hope that translates into a better overall record.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - TheFarm07 - 01-26-2025

Not sure what we didn't see during Betts' sole year on the team, but she is fulfilling expectations as the #1 recruit of her HS class:
31 pts on 14/15 shooting so far against Maryland today

Averaging a double-double this season 20 pts/10 rebounds on 60% shooting

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - JohnR34231 - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 01:30 PM)TheFarm07 Wrote:  Not sure what we didn't see during Betts' sole year on the team, but she is fulfilling expectations as the #1 recruit of her HS class:
31 pts on 14/15 shooting so far against Maryland today

Averaging a double-double this season 20 pts/10 rebounds on 60% shooting

Yeah, we screwed the pooch on that one.
We should have done what we had to in order to keep her around, assuming that was possible.
Maybe it wasn't.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - BostonCard - 01-26-2025

No question she is thriving at UCLA as a junior.  As I understand it based on comments made, there were two concerns she had at Stanford (there may be others, but these are the two that have been articulated publicly).  The first was around her mental health.  Maybe that is something where the Athletics Department should have given her more resources (eg: counseling) to deal with it, and it is possible that she felt she was not getting an empathetic response from Stanford.  It's also possible that the environment itself was very stressful or that once here she felt she needed a change in environment to help her cope.  It's impossible to know, and really inappropriate to speculate.  Maybe this is something Stanford screwed the pooch with or maybe it was unavoidable.

The second was around playing time.  Stanford already had a star post (Brink) and a rising star (Iriafen).  Even had she stayed, it would have been a struggle to get playing time her sophomore year, and that was clearly frustrating to her and her family.  She would have been a featured player this year (probably the featured player on the team), had she stayed, but since both Brink (COVID year) and Iriafen (a Junior) had eligibility left, it's not like the staff could make any promises about where she would be on the depth chart.

So, hard to say whether this was avoidable or not.  In another era (with a redshirt requirement for transfers, and when the approach everywhere to mental health was "tough it out"), maybe she would have stayed after her freshman year, seen a bit more time, and then found out that Brink was going to the NBA and both she and Iriafen would have been stars this year.  Alas, it is this era, and we went from having a plethora of posts to a real deficit.  The current environment is tough on Stanford.

While I am generally against the ease at which players can transfer, it is hard to get too upset here.  She seems to be thriving at UCLA, and though I wish she had had the patience to stay at Stanford and persevere through the issues that wound up leading to her transfer, who am I to judge, really.  Maybe she would have tried to stay and been miserable for four years, and always struggled to play in the Stanford system.

BC

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - martyup - 01-26-2025

Performance on the court is not the only criteria to judge the value of a player on a team.  Betts clearly wasn't happy with the playing time she was getting behind Brink and Iriafen.  Perhaps there was some bad blood too with her and some other players on the team.  IDK.  She wasn't patient enough to wait her turn.  Had she stayed, she would probably be putting up similar numbers at Stanford and we would have many fewer losses.  One thing she will never have, however, is a Stanford degree.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - Griffins78 - 01-26-2025

Also it wasn’t known that Iriafen was going to transfer. Betts could have been looking at playing behind Kiki last year and this year. So she could have thought she wouldn’t be the team leader until her senior year.

Mudhead - Mudhead - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 06:00 PM)Griffins78 Wrote:  Also it wasn’t known that Iriafen was going to transfer. Betts could have been looking at playing behind Kiki last year and this year. So she could have thought she wouldn’t be the team leader until her senior year.

All true. The fact remains however , that we lost the number one recruit in the country; a recruit who has blosssomed at UCLA and will probably get them a national championship .  It is not important that , we, the unwashed understand why we lost her. It is vital and essential to having a quality program that Kate Paye, Bernard Muir and Stanford leadership do a dispassionate, no holds bar study of why we lost her and come to agreement on what must be changed to prevent it happening again. I assume and hope we have done that . We are not a quality program if we have not.

RE: Mudhead - 2006alum - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 06:27 PM)Mudhead Wrote:  
(01-26-2025, 06:00 PM)Griffins78 Wrote:  Also it wasn’t known that Iriafen was going to transfer. Betts could have been looking at playing behind Kiki last year and this year. So she could have thought she wouldn’t be the team leader until her senior year.

All true. The fact remains however , that we lost the number one recruit in the country; a recruit who has blosssomed at UCLA and will probably get them a national championship .  It is not important that , we, the unwashed understand why we lost her. It is vital and essential to having a quality program that Kate Paye, Bernard Muir and Stanford leadership do a dispassionate, no holds bar study of why we lost her and come to agreement on what must be changed to prevent it happening again. I assume and hope we have done that . We are not a quality program if we have not.

With all due respect to Betts, she's not the sun and the earth. She's also not the first 5 star recruit to transfer schools and flourish at her new destination. She said in her podcast interview with Haley Jones that she did all her "visits" remotely during COVID and committed without ever stepping foot on campus. Given how totally abberational everything about the past four years has been (COVID, Stanford's "hate fun" response to it, the dissolution of the Pac-12 and haphazard move to the ACC, NIL, the transfer portal, and the logjam of top posts immediately above Betts), I think losing Betts was both (a) something of an overdetermined outcome, and (b) not even the AD's top ten biggest issues it should be throwing attention at. We nabbed Somfai and retained Swain, and we have a top 3 recruiting class coming in. If we should be focusing on anything, it's how to retain Agara and Clardy when this season is over.

RE: Mudhead - BostonCard - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 06:27 PM)Mudhead Wrote:  It is vital and essential to having a quality program that Kate Paye, Bernard Muir and Stanford leadership do a dispassionate, no holds bar study of why we lost her and come to agreement on what must be changed to prevent it happening again. I assume and hope we have done that .

Sometimes people just want a fresh start in a new environment.  And what is to say that the next time we pull all the stops to keep a highly touted recruit who is stuck on the bench behind two all-Conference players that said player won’t wind up a bust.

BC

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - Card10Fan - 01-26-2025

Betts winning a natty at UCLA is not a foregone conclusion. Heck UCLA as a program has never been to a Final 4. They are very good this year no doubt but I would pick SC in a rematch with them, Notre Dame, UConn, LSU as teams that are very capable of beating the Bruins (with just as much talent).


We at Stanford all know how elusive National Championships are. A lot of things have to go right and it involves some luck too and excellent coaching. Cori Close is a good, not great coach.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - PVTree - 01-26-2025

The top teams all seem to be teams I don't want winning the championship. For me, it is no to UCLA, U$C, USB, LSU, and Yukon. A team that still hasn't gotten on my nerves is South Carolina as I like Dawn Stanley.

Don't think any other teams have a decent chance to win it all. Perhaps Texas, but that's it It will probably be a lesser of 2 evils decision for me with SoCar at the top of the list and UCLA at the bottom.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - M T - 01-26-2025

I wonder if Betts's mother is still trying to tell Close how to coach.  I know college freshmen have little control of their parents, but jeesh.  I also know that the team played as if there were discord among the players that year.   I, for one, was glad and am still glad that Betts left.

Mudhead - Mudhead - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 06:43 PM)2006alum Wrote:  
(01-26-2025, 06:27 PM)Mudhead Wrote:  
(01-26-2025, 06:00 PM)Griffins78 Wrote:  Also it wasn’t known that Iriafen was going to transfer. Betts could have been looking at playing behind Kiki last year and this year. So she could have thought she wouldn’t be the team leader until her senior year.

All true. The fact remains however , that we lost the number one recruit in the country; a recruit who has blosssomed at UCLA and will probably get them a national championship .  It is not important that , we, the unwashed understand why we lost her. It is vital and essential to having a quality program that Kate Paye, Bernard Muir and Stanford leadership do a dispassionate, no holds bar study of why we lost her and come to agreement on what must be changed to prevent it happening again. I assume and hope we have done that . We are not a quality program if we have not.

With all due respect to Betts, she's not the sun and the earth. She's also not the first 5 star recruit to transfer schools and flourish at her new destination. She said in her podcast interview with Haley Jones that she did all her "visits" remotely during COVID and committed without ever stepping foot on campus. Given how totally abberational everything about the past four years has been (COVID, Stanford's "hate fun" response to it, the dissolution of the Pac-12 and haphazard move to the ACC, NIL, the transfer portal, and the logjam of top posts immediately above Betts), I think losing Betts was both (a) something of an overdetermined outcome, and (b) not even the AD's top ten biggest issues it should be throwing attention at. We nabbed Somfai and retained Swain, and we have a top 3 recruiting class coming in. If we should be focusing on anything, it's how to retain Agara and Clardy when this season is over.

You are as right as any of us can be about the factors that led Betts to leave. And we don’t have to be right. But the Coach and the school have to know why she left or it is just blind hope that we do t lose Agara and Clardy and our entering class.  Failure to learn from bad events is the hallmark of a fading institution.  Fading on the way to obscurity.

I don’t know Paye well at all but from what I do know she is too analytical and too determined to succeed to fail to understand how you lose a great player. Worth understanding as well why Kiki would not do another year at Stanford.

I repeat .. if you don’t learn from bad things, odds are you will continue to get chances .”

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - 81alum - 01-26-2025

RE: Betts, announcers and fans began commenting during her freshman year on how hard it was to get Betts playing time, and so when she left, everyone naturally assumed that the playing time had something to do with it.  At some point (perhaps the Haley Jones interview) she denied it had anything to do with playing time and laughed at how mistaken people were about her.  She has noted mental health concerns.  That could mean a lot of things, many of which might have nothing to do with basketball.   She might have felt she did not fit in to the Stanford environment outside of basketball, or maybe it did have something to do with relationships on the team or with the coaches.  We don't know.

Let me also note that in sports there is often less opportunity for the student-athlete to become independent of parents--something that is a natural part of growing up and especially going away to college.  Parents want to attend games, manage their child's future career, etc., protect their child against injuries, etc.  It seems to me that there is also a paternalistic flavor to this--I have not seen as much of this behavior with male athletes as with female athletes.  But your average Stanford student does not see their parents every weekend and does not have them talking to their professors on a regular basis, the way a WBB player might have her parents hovering over her, following along to away games, talking to coaches, etc.  I've always thought there is something unwholesome about that, and sometimes it has bad ramifications for the player and for the team.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - paloalto - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 08:06 PM)M T Wrote:  I wonder if Betts's mother is still trying to tell Close how to coach.  I know college freshmen have little control of their parents, but jeesh.  I also know that the team played as if there were discord among the players that year.   I, for one, was glad and am still glad that Betts left.

What signs indicated to you there was discord among the players?  If you are implicating Betts as a freshman being the source of discord among players you need to have some proof to make that accusation.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - TonyLima - 01-26-2025

(01-26-2025, 09:00 PM)81alum Wrote:  RE: Betts, announcers and fans began commenting during her freshman year on how hard it was to get Betts playing time, and so when she left, everyone naturally assumed that the playing time had something to do with it.  At some point (perhaps the Haley Jones interview) she denied it had anything to do with playing time and laughed at how mistaken people were about her.  She has noted mental health concerns.  That could mean a lot of things, many of which might have nothing to do with basketball.   She might have felt she did not fit in to the Stanford environment outside of basketball, or maybe it did have something to do with relationships on the team or with the coaches.  We don't know.

Let me also note that in sports there is often less opportunity for the student-athlete to become independent of parents--something that is a natural part of growing up and especially going away to college.  Parents want to attend games, manage their child's future career, etc., protect their child against injuries, etc.  It seems to me that there is also a paternalistic flavor to this--I have not seen as much of this behavior with male athletes as with female athletes.  But your average Stanford student does not see their parents every weekend and does not have them talking to their professors on a regular basis, the way a WBB player might have her parents hovering over her, following along to away games, talking to coaches, etc.  I've always thought there is something unwholesome about that, and sometimes it has bad ramifications for the player and for the team.

Speaking as someone who went from a middle-class midwestern upbringing to MIT I can assure you the transition is not easy. Can’t imagine what it would be like adding the pressure of a big-time basketball program. Add in the lack of playing time — iirc there were many comments hereabouts — and her move makes a lot ohf sense to me.

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - BostonCard - 01-27-2025

(01-26-2025, 09:00 PM)81alum Wrote:  RE: Betts, announcers and fans began commenting during her freshman year on how hard it was to get Betts playing time, and so when she left, everyone naturally assumed that the playing time had something to do with it.  At some point (perhaps the Haley Jones interview) she denied it had anything to do with playing time and laughed at how mistaken people were about her.  She has noted mental health concerns.  That could mean a lot of things, many of which might have nothing to do with basketball.   She might have felt she did not fit in to the Stanford environment outside of basketball, or maybe it did have something to do with relationships on the team or with the coaches.  We don't know.

The playing time comment wasn’t an assumption; her mother was on record saying that she didn’t think Stanford used Betts “effectively” which I think was code for “enough”.

BC

RE: WBB -- 2024-2025 Season - M T - 01-27-2025

(01-26-2025, 09:00 PM)81alum Wrote:  But your average Stanford student does not see their parents every weekend and does not have them talking to their professors on a regular basis, the way a WBB player might have her parents hovering over her, following along to away games, talking to coaches, etc.  I've always thought there is something unwholesome about that, and sometimes it has bad ramifications for the player and for the team.

I would have thought you would be very aware that most college students live with or near to their parents.
A 2020 study indicated 57% of new college students didn't move away from home.  It indicated that the schools with the farthest pull are CalTech, MIT, and Stanford—students avg. more than 1,000 miles to attend.  Similar numbers were found in 2018.

A study released in 2022 by researchers at Harvard and the US Census Bureau indicated
The distance between Stanford students & their parents is abnormally great.  There is little weaning for the students that get uprooted to travel half-way across the country to take up residence.  Most college students (and their parents) have time to transition from their home town and birth family to a life on their own.  Perhaps the communication available in this century allows for continued contact, despite the physical distance.

I am not arguing that it is better or worse to have that separation. I know it is better for some and worse for others.  I am only suggesting that the average Stanford student is more separated from their parents than most others of their age group.  If Stanford athletes happen to see their parents an extra handful of times a year, they are still probably more separated than the majority of their age group.  (Indeed, I suspect that NCAA freshmen on scholarships have fewer interactions with their parents than other freshmen, as they likely travelled farther from home to college.)

I will refrain from speculating on how that separation affected me versus my siblings who stayed relatively close to home.  We were each different people at age 18 and so it would be hard to differentiate the effect of this distance on subsequent maturation and family relationships.