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A great example of what I believe Stanford could/should have done before simply hiring coach Paye is by look at Vanderbilt. 

Shea Ralph played at Uconn for Geno, was a longtime assistant coach under Geno (13ish years). Took an opportunity to be the head coach at Vandy. Now in year 5, she has Vandy as a top 5 team in the country and they will be making their third straight NCAA tourney. PROVEN RESULTS. 
So when Geno retires and he recommends to the AD Shea Ralph be the next UConn HC (as some speculate), proven results show that she'd be a great hire because she has already shown she is a great head coach. 

Instead Stanford followed the route of Tennessee (a once storied program like us) by hiring Holly Warlick someone with no head coaching experience. We all know how that turned out in the end. Since her firing, Warlick has not landed another head coaching job. The Lady Vols have not been back to a Final 4 in almost 20 years either.

That is why (in the event Coach Paye can't get the job done and is fired), Stanford must look for a highly successful (current) head coach with proven results in turning around other programs, and who WANTS the challenge of bringing Stanford back to an elite program.  Promoting from within is not the way to achieve this goal.  Of course, what if the AD didn't have that goal of bringing Stanford WBB back to where it was, what would the future of the program be?

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A great example of what I believe Stanford could/should have done before simply hiring coach Paye is by look at Vanderbilt. 

Shea Ralph played at Uconn for Geno, was a longtime assistant coach under Geno (13ish years). Took an opportunity to be the head coach at Vandy. Now in year 5, she has Vandy as a top 5 team in the country and they will be making their third straight NCAA tourney. PROVEN RESULTS. 
So when Geno retires and he recommends to the AD Shea Ralph be the next UConn HC (as some speculate), proven results show that she'd be a great hire because she has already shown she is a great head coach. 

Instead Stanford followed the route of Tennessee (a once storied program like us) by hiring Holly Warlick someone with no head coaching experience. We all know how that turned out in the end. Since her firing, Warlick has not landed another head coaching job. The Lady Vols have not been back to a Final 4 in almost 20 years either.

That is why (in the event Coach Paye can't get the job done and is fired), Stanford must look for a highly successful (current) head coach with proven results in turning around other programs, and who WANTS the challenge of bringing Stanford back to an elite program.  Promoting from within is not the way to achieve this goal.  Of course, what if the AD didn't have that goal of bringing Stanford WBB back to where it was, what would the future of the program be?