The Pac-12 has stood out as one of the best women’s basketball leagues in the nation over the last two decades. This being the league’s final season, each month the Star is sharing Pac-12-centered stories of former Arizona players, as well as former and current league coaches. Up this week: The winningest coach in college basketball history — her 1,214 wins are most across the women’s and men’s game — Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer.
VanDerveer came west to coach at Stanford in 1985 after a successful run at Ohio State. At Stanford, she has won three national championships (the most recent in 2021 against Arizona), 27 regular-season league titles and 15 conference tournament titles, while also a five-time national Coach of the Year, 17-time Pac-12/10 Coach of the Year and is a member of both the Naismith and Women’s Basketball Halls of Fame. In addition, she stepped away from Stanford in 1996 to coach USA Basketball and won a gold medal in the Atlanta Summer Games.
Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer cheers on her team during the first half of a matchup with Tennessee on Nov. 26, 1999, in Stanford, California.
VanDerveer coached two years at Idaho prior to her five-year stint at Ohio State. She played guard in college at Albany and Indiana. The number of elite players VanDerveer has coached is astounding, including more than 85 Pac-12 first-teamers, more than 35 All-Americans and around 40 to play for USA Basketball.
Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer and her bench celebrate as the Cardinal start pulling away from Arizona in the third quarter of their Pac-12 matchup at McKale Center in Tucson on Feb. 9, 2023.
Best of the West: “(The Pac-12 is) a great league and I think contrary to what people may think it always has been. I came from the Big Ten, and what I noticed right away was just the variety of styles that people played. You go from one night playing against a full-court defense, and then the next night you’d play half-court 1-3-1. You had to prepare for everything. The number of great players when I first came to Stanford — we played against (USC’s) Cheryl Miller and Cynthia Cooper. Who is better than that?
“We have competed with everyone for the top spot. One year it might be us and Arizona, another year was us and Arizona State. It could have been Cal. We’ve played against so many different teams in the championship game of the either Pac-12 tournament or if you look at the finishes, it’s been Stanford-Oregon or Stanford-Oregon State or Washington. It’s just the excellence through and through. It’s just been incredible.”
“There’s great talent. There’s great coaching. here’s just phenomenal educational institutions. Everything makes it so special. That adds to just how hard it is of what we’re going through. I don’t know that it will ever be better than what we’ve seen. It’s been really fun. A phenomenal run.”
The Pac-12’s 2024 Player of the Year (and Defensive Player of the Year) Cameron Brink is just another in the long line of standouts coached by Tara VanDerveer in her illustrious career at Stanford.
Forefront of growth in women’s basketball: “Universities have made commitments to women’s sports and women’s basketball. And when you have commitment for resources of coaches and trainers and all the things that you need to have a great program, then the sport will grow. Also, I think (the) Pac-12 Network really helped (the) Pac-12 grow because the rest of the country saw real quality players and teams. I think that then, actually, with the development of the Pac-12, it (grew) even more nationally — everyone wants to keep up with somebody else.”
Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer, pictured with Ashley Adamson of Pac-12 Network, waves to the crowd after breaking the college basketball record for career wins with her team’s victory over Oregon State on Jan. 21 in Stanford, California. While she defends that Pac-12 women’s basketball has always been top-tier, Vanderveer credits Pac-12 Network with helping push the league and its schools into the national lexicon over the last decade-plus.
That ‘I have arrived’ moment: “it was very exciting coming out here in 1985. Although the team at that time was not very strong. We had a lot of work to do in terms of recruiting and changing the culture of the team and the expectations of the team. It was challenging getting players into Stanford is big challenge — finding players that have the profile academically and athletically. That was going be different than what had been in the past.
“The first time I felt like we really had arrived, I just remember a game against Washington, where we had probably about 4,000 people and it was loud and it was exciting. And I’m like, ‘This is what I did it for.’ I’d left Ohio State — a great program, a great team, where we played in front of thousands of people. And now, we’re getting that here at Stanford.”
U.S. women's basketball coach Tara VanDerveer, right, hugs Ruthie Bolton, as Venus Lacey watches the action on the court during the final moments of the gold metal women's basketball game against Brazil at the Summer Olympic Games in Atlanta on Aug. 4, 1996.
Stanford a special place: “I think that Stanford is a unique challenge of excellence in academics and we want it to be excellence in athletics, too. And I think that that has come to fruition — having Pac-12 championship teams, national championship teams, Final Four teams, plus women that have gone on to law school, medical school, they are professors at major universities.
“They’ve been able to combine both and I think that that was something that in my mind that was like Stanford is really special in that regard. It’s the only place, in my mind, that you are getting that type of elite education and you have the opportunity to compete at a really elite basketball level.”
Arizona State coach Natasha Adair, right, shakes hands with Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer after a Cardinal victory over the Sun Devils on Dec. 31, 2022. Of the many things VanDerveer is proud of the Pac-12 being at the forefront of promoting opportunities for more women to coach college basketball.
Strong female coaches: “I’m really proud of just the Pac-12 and the competitiveness that we have and the depth of the conference and, and also, just how well so many of our young female coaches have done. I really think that in coaching, in teaching, it’s probably beneficial to have both men and women coaches, but because women are not part of men’s basketball, then we’re kind of cut out of half of the opportunities.
Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer cuts down the net after her Cardinal win the National Championship by defeating Arizona in the final game of the 2021 NCAA Women's Basketball Tournament on April 4, 2021, in San Antonio. The Cardinal defeated the Wildcats 54-53.
“I feel like then I want to give opportunities to women to give them the chance to coach and develop. And I think the Pac-12 universities have recognized that the importance of having female leaders on campus and female basketball coaches, and it’s great that they’ve done so well.
“And I’ve mentored in some way, so many of them, that I feel like a proud mom or grandma.”
