Tara VanDerveer units file for many wins in NCAA hoops historical past

STANFORD, Calif. — Step apart, Coach Ok. Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer is the brand new winningest basketball coach in NCAA historical past.

The Stanford girls’s basketball staff defeated Oregon State 65-56 at Maples Pavilion Sunday to provide VanDerveer her 1,203rd profession victory, passing former Duke males’s coach Mike Krzyzewski.

“I am very appreciative of all the nice gamers I’ve coached and the nice locations I have been and the eye this dropped at girls’s basketball,” VanDerveer mentioned. “I am not all the time actually snug within the limelight, however I perceive that that sort of goes with the job.”

Krzyzewski, who held the file since 2019, issued a press release congratulating VanDerveer after the sport.

“It is a super accomplishment for Tara VanDerveer, who’s already some of the completed coaches within the historical past of basketball. That is yet one more milestone so as to add to an incredible legacy,” Krzyzewski mentioned. “Extra necessary than all of the astounding numbers and profession accomplishments, she’s positively impacted numerous lives as a coach and a mentor. Tara stays a real guardian of our sport.”

Taking part in with out star ahead Cameron Brink, who suffered a knee damage in a win in opposition to Oregon on Friday, the Cardinal (17-2, 6-1 Pac-12) put apart a sluggish begin to make sure VanDerveer would break the file in entrance of a house crowd.

“I advised our staff, I mentioned, ‘That is what looks like profitable a nationwide championship,'” VanDerveer mentioned. “You are simply so excited and also you’re so pleased. I wish to construct on this and get higher.”

Junior Kiki Iriafen had a dominant efficiency for the Cardinal, ending with a career-high 36 factors and 12 rebounds, whereas Talana Lepolo added 14 factors.

Lepolo mentioned there have been some nerves enjoying in entrance a packed health club and a way of duty to win to permit their coach to be honored at dwelling with two highway video games forward.

Roughly 30 of VanDerveer’s former gamers — together with Jayne Appel, Jennifer Azzi, Ros Gold-Onwude and Chiney Ogwumike — have been among the many 7,022 followers in attendance to rejoice the achievement. Former Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck was additionally available.

After falling behind 29-28 early within the third quarter, Stanford closed the quarter on a 22-14 run to take management going into the fourth. Oregon State (15-3, 4-3) did not significantly threaten the remainder of the way in which.

Krzyzewski was one among a number of dignitaries related to Stanford or the game of basketball who spoke in a video presentation to congratulate VanDerveer after the sport. Others who spoke included former tennis participant Billie Jean King, South Carolina girls’s basketball coach Daybreak Staley, Golden State Warriors coach Steve Kerr, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, longtime WNBA star Lisa Leslie, Ogwumike and Azzi.

VanDerveer, 70, is in her thirty eighth season at Stanford after earlier stints as the pinnacle coach at Idaho (1978-80) and Ohio State (1980-1985). The five-time nationwide coach of the yr has led Stanford to 3 nationwide titles (1990, 1992, 2021), 14 Remaining Fours, 25 Pac-12 regular-season titles and 34 journeys to the NCAA match.

A 2011 inductee into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame, VanDerveer has gathered extra wins than 355 of the 360 NCAA Division I girls’s packages. In 1996, VanDerveer took a yr off from teaching at Stanford to guide the U.S. girls’s nationwide staff to a gold medal on the Atlanta Olympics, which helped paved the way in which for the launch of the WNBA in 1997.

On Saturday night time, VanDerveer was discussing the wins file with former Stanford males’s coach Mike Montgomery — who spent 17 years on the Farm and 14 others seasons as a NCAA head coach at Montana and Cal — and the magnitude of the wins file actually set in.

“[Montgomery] advised me — I used to be watching the lads’s recreation — and he mentioned, ‘I would have to teach 20 extra years and win 25 video games a yr to succeed in [1,203],'” she mentioned. “And I am like, wow. It is a huge quantity.”

For VanDerveer, her longevity is a tribute to the enjoyment teaching brings her.

“I wish to say that I’ve by no means felt that teaching basketball was a j-o-b, job,” she mentioned. “I can not wait to come back into the health club. I like coming to follow, love coming to the video games and it is enjoyable. I get to put on sneakers to follow and the video games, and all of you, our followers, are so implausible.”

She has coached two Naismith Participant of the 12 months winners, 36 first-team All-People and 19 Pac-12 Gamers of the 12 months, whereas practically 40 of her gamers went to play for USA Basketball.

It stays to seen how lengthy VanDerveer will maintain the file. UConn girls’s coach Geno Auriemma, 69, the third-winningest NCAA basketball coach, trails her by seven wins (1,196). Whoever finally ends up with the file will doubtless come right down to which of the 2 retains teaching longer.

“I do not see Tara retiring any time quickly,” Azzi mentioned.