Stanford prepares to face UConn

Jamila Wideman called. Vanessa Nygaard, Charmin Smith and Christy Hedgpeth got in touch, too. Even Charles Barkley.

"Go ahead and win that thing," Sir Charles said.

Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer has heard from many of her former Cardinal stars and then some since her team advanced to its first Final Four in 11 years by beating top-seeded Maryland on Monday night in the Spokane Regional.

"They feel the drought, too," VanDerveer said Wednesday.

Stanford (34-3), riding a 22-game winning streak and superstar Candice Wiggins' hot hand, now must prepare for a rematch with Connecticut in the national semifinals Sunday in Tampa, Fla. The Huskies (36-1) beat the Cardinal 66-54 on Nov. 22 in the Virgin Islands. Both teams have come a long way since then.

VanDerveer's first order of business to prepare for the Final Four was to re-watch that game, when her team was still finding itself and she was still experimenting with her rotation and how to divvy up playing time.

"That was the Stanford JV," the coach said. "We did not do the things we needed to do. They ate us up and spit us out. It was embarrassing."

All season long, VanDerveer has talked to her players about the journey to accomplishing their goals — first of which was finally returning to the Final Four. She compared her team 4 1/2 months ago to her team now to "a caterpillar and butterfly."

Not long after that tough defeat, Stanford upset then-No. 1 Tennessee 73-69 in overtime Dec. 14 at Maples Pavilion to end an 11-game losing streak to the Lady Vols. VanDerveer and her players figure that win might not have been possible had the Cardinal missed going through the learning experience of the UConn game and the frustration they felt afterward.

"It's hard to even think about," Wiggins, the Pac-10's career scoring leader, said before the team took the practice floor Wednesday. "That UConn loss kind of changed our season, on how hard we played."

Early this season, guards Rosalyn Gold-Onwude and JJ Hones were still making their comebacks. Gold-Onwude sat out all of last season recovering from ACL knee surgery and Hones missed the final month of last year after tearing her anterior cruciate ligament and needing surgery. Pac-10 Freshman of the Year Kayla Pedersen hadn't hit her groove and 6-foot-4 center Jayne Appel wasn't finishing her shots with the same consistency that has been such a key part of Stanford's 2008 tournament run.

"I feel like we've closed the gap," VanDerveer said. "UConn started out of the gate really fast. We were not ready for them. Our UConn game helped us as much or more than any game this season. Our team saw this team that was a machine in November. We knew, 'We're not there, but that's where we want to be.'"

VanDerveer, too, has made big strides this season — even from a happiness standpoint. She's learned over the past decade to ignore all of the skeptics who criticized the program and its longtime coach for being oh so close to a Final Four return.

She's had confidence in this bunch from the beginning, a contagious attitude that starts with Wiggins and trickles down to the role players.

"To win a national championship at Stanford and win a gold medal, that's the most pressure I've ever experienced," VanDerveer said. "To do that, you learn to weather the storm, get through the negativity, don't read stuff. ... It has become harder. There are more players and there are better teams. I appreciate it a little more now."

Stanford advanced to three straight Final Fours from 1995-97, and a handful of those players are planning to travel to Tampa for an informal reunion. VanDerveer did not coach the 1996 team while away for a year leading the U.S. Olympic team.

Smith, an assistant coach for the Cardinal until joining the staff at Bay Area rival California this season, is one of the players going.

"We'll have a crew," Smith said in a phone interview Wednesday.

She has text messaged VanDerveer, Wiggins and several other players offering her congratulations. Stanford's appearance will mark the first Final Four trip by a West Coast team since the '97 Cardinal, and no program out West has won it all since Stanford in 1992.

"I think it's just a very proud moment for Stanford basketball," Smith said. "Knowing Candice the way I do, if there's ever been a player who deserves to go to Final Four, she's at the top of the list."

VanDerveer can look at the three other teams that will join hers in Tampa this weekend and know they've all played a part in Stanford's successful path.

In fact, she took time to thank each program Wednesday. It was LSU in 2006 that sent the Cardinal home in demoralizing fashion for the third straight year in the regional final — oh so close to the Final Four.

Tennessee's dominance of the Cardinal for a decade before the December triumph gave Stanford that extra fuel and, then after the win, a rush of much-needed confidence. And UConn, well that game back in November showed the team just how far it still needed to get to be clicking come March when it mattered most.

"We are very ready. We haven't been out here on the West Coast just playing ourselves," VanDerveer said. "We've been in the national mix from Day 1."