Stanford women’s basketball junior forward Kiki Iriafen caught up with CardinalSportsReport.com about how she’s feeling about the upcoming season and how she feels the team is coming together.
VIDEO: Stanford forward Kiki Iriafen is excited for her junior season
Iriafen feels like the team is motivated and practice has been hard, but good. With 12 people on the team this year, everyone is getting a lot of reps and is bought into what their goal is as a team. Iriafen has most been working on her shot. Specifically her 3-point shot and high post shot and just being unpredictable with her shot.
As a junior, Iriafen likes being an upperclassman and being able to mentor the younger players. Being more of a vocal leader. She likes being one who can help ensure everyone is on the same page and oriented towards the same goal.
Looking back on her time as a freshman, her main advice to incoming freshmen is just to have fun and take away the pressure as much as possible. All about remembering why you play the game.
Iriafen had great things to say about her teammate Cameron Brink. Just how unstoppable Brink is in the post. Iriafen has to guard her in practice every day, which makes her a better player. She said Brink has become a really vocal leader and she thinks the two of them will be able to do a lot of high-low stuff together.
Reflecting on last season and how that ended in a second round exit of the NCAA tournament, Iriafen said the biggest thing they’ve taken away from that tournament is be more aggressive from the jump. She felt like too often they played down to their opponents’ level as opposed to being more aggressive and asserting their will on their opponent.
Iriafen said with the Hull twins gone and Haley Jones now gone, those are big shoes to fill, but she is confident they have people who can step up. She said everyone is stepping up and knows they have those roles to fill.
Iriafen said the main message from head coach Tara VanDerveer and the entire coaching staff is to believe in themselves and not get distracted by any negativity that might be coming from the media or outside forces. As long as they maintain that belief and stick together, she thinks they’ll be fine.
Iriafen lit up when asked about the freshmen: Nunu Agara, Courtney Ogden, and Chloe Clardy. She feels like they are all doing an amazing job of learning the system and adjusting to all that comes with playing basketball at Stanford. She praised their ability to quickly learn things.
Iriafen talked about her major, which is product design. She came in as an intended mechanical engineering major, but switched once she learned more about what the design school offers. She’s taking a lot of core design classes for her major and also a marketing class. Being able to fuse marketing and design is something she’s extremely passionate about. She loves her major because she can be creative and work with people, so she is thrilled with how things are going academically.
What Iriafen has most enjoyed about Stanford is the people. She loves engaging with people on campus and learning from them. She’s very much a people person and loves the diversity of ideas that you can encounter on campus.
Iriafen is pumped for the season to start. She can’t wait for November to come. She said the entire team is excited to get after it against other teams. “Excitement” is the word she used to describe the mood of the team.
On Erica McCall and Tempie Brown being added as assistant coaches, Iriafen feels like they have been good additions to the team. Brown in her second stint on staff and McCall coming back to The Farm after being a player and having a WNBA career. Having someone in McCall who has played at the highest level is a real benefit to the team as she can relate to what they are going through. She commented that McCall works with the posts and so she’s gotten a chance to work with her a lot.
Brown recruited Iriafen to Stanford, but Iriafen never got to play when she was on staff, so she is very much looking forward to getting to build on the relationship that they started when she was in high school. She said it has been amazing to have her back.
On the WNBA getting an expansion team in the Bay Area, Iriafen is stoked about that. She thinks it is great for women sports in general. She thinks it is a great addition to the league given how close it is to Stanford. Iriafen said Candace Parker is a WNBA player who she has looked up to. She said she has been a big role model for her. As for current players, A’ja Wilson of the Las Vegas Aces is the player who she most likes to watch and learn from.
Finally, Iriafen shared her favorite flavor of Gatorade. Watch the end of the interview to see what she said.
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