By Morris Phillips
SAN FRANCISCO–Kate Paye hasn’t spent two decades with the Stanford women’s basketball team without developing resilience. And that’s her makeup, not necessarily a characteristic she assumed from her mentor, legendary coach Tara VanDerveer. At this point, her Stanford experience is uniquely hers, for better or worse. And worse was Friday’s sobering loss to Ohio State at the Invisalign Bay Area Women’s Classic at Chase Center.
Paye’s response to a third, aggravating loss this month?
“I love coaching this team. There are three other teams that are here, I wouldn’t want to be in any other locker room. I love the women on our team. We have an incredible staff who work extremely hard. We have to learn from it. This is as our mindfulness coach would tell us, this is information, this is feedback. It doesn’t affect the players or the coaches that we are, the human beings that we are. We have to learn from it, and we have to work to improve,” she said.
Starting with the Cardinal’s fourth quarter defensive hiccup at LSU, Paye’s team has regressed defensively. The host Tigers shot 10 for 17 in that final period, which forced overtime and resulted in a 94-88 loss for Stanford. Rival California found the hot hand early and maintained it in an 83-63 decision that dropped Stanford to 0-1 in the ACC. The Bears set a school record with 18 made threes.
And Friday, Ohio State shot it so well that Stanford resorted to playing zone briefly to break the Buckeyes’ spell. That didn’t make a difference, nor did Stanford’s tardy and lethargic offensive attack.
“I just didn’t come out with the level of aggression I usually do,” said leading scorer Nunu Agara, who looked good in the box score with 17 points, 10 rebounds, but didn’t impress herself. “Just being mentally locked in, staying with things. I think I didn’t do that great of a job in the first half–honestly the first three quarters. I turned it up a little too late. As for our team, we were a little shell-shocked about their press.”
Paye acknowledged that her team’s success shooting the three in the season’s first five games told future opponents to emphasize shutting down Stanford’s perimeter attack. From her perspective, the response has to be to drive and attack the basket. As of yet, that counter hasn’t kicked in. The quality of the opponents hasn’t helped either. Ohio State’s hands-on press proved pesky, forcing 19 turnovers and scoring 17 points off those mistakes.
Stanford’s issues started offensively with just 19 points scored before halftime, then defensively, by allowing Ohio State 51 points after the break.
The Cardinal catch a break after Friday to be home for Christmas. After that, a winnable road trip to SMU and Clemson kicks off conference play. Paye’s mission and her team’s will be to recapture the magic and remember what makes them a formidable team.
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