Recap: #2 Stanford WBB vanquishes Vanguard in exhibition

On Wednesday, Stanford women’s basketball defeated Vanguard 102-25 in their exhibition game at Maples Pavilion. Hannah Jump led the way for Stanford with 12 points on 4-9 shooting from 3-point range while freshman center Lauren Betts had 10 points and 4 rebounds. Ashten Prechtel (11 points &7 rebounds), Elena Bosgana (11 points & 8 rebounds), and Cameron Brink (10 points & 6 rebounds) also finished in double figures. Halle Si’I was the top scorer for Vanguard with 7 points.

“Can’t believe we’re playing again!” Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer exclaimed in her opening post-game remarks. “But we’re real excited. I thought our team, we kinda started out a little bit slow, but we got it going with real good defense. Agnes played great defense, Kiki rebounding and running the floor. I think we have a, it’s gonna be a challenge to, for me to figure out who to be out there, but some of it is going to be who’s playing defense and who’s playing really hard. So, it’s great to see us rebounding and running the floor and on this situation, I think, I mean Vanguard was over-matched. But, it didn’t look that way early. So, I thought our bench was great, came in, a lot of people contributing.”

One of the things to look for coming into this game was what starting lineup Tara VanDerveer would roll with. She elected to start Cameron Brink, Agnes Emma-Nnopu, Haley Jones, Hannah Jump, and Kiki Iriafen. It’s not the biggest possible lineup Stanford can go with, but it’s pretty big as Jones was handling point guard duties.

The game got off to a bit of a slow start as Stanford led 13-5 with 2:00 to go in the 1st quarter right after Francesca Belibigot a nice bucket inside. Belibi had her hand wrapped during Saturday’s open practice so there was some questions about how much she would play. She looked fine and didn’t have her hand wrapped at all.

At the end of the 1st quarter, Stanford led 19-10. Stanford was shooting 7-15 (46.7%) from the field and 3-10 (30.0%) from 3-point range. Nobody had more than 3 points for Stanford, indicating good scoring balance.

Stanford would start to pull away a bit in the 2nd quarter as they led 27-14 with 4:46 to go until halftime. Jump was heating up with 9 points on 3-8 shooting from 3-point range. She was in a nice groove. Emma-Nnopu was also bringing good energy on defense with 2 steals, proving her value in the starting lineup.

“Yeah, for sure,” Emma-Nnopu said when asked if defense has been a focus of hers. “I think with the people [that we lost], like with Anna, Lexi, Lacie, like there’s people who I always watch, like how they play defense. And they’ve always just brought their aggressiveness and that’s something I wanted to bring in and I think the freshmen who came in today in the game later on, they were also aggressive. So that’s something we’ve all been emphasizing during practice. Yeah. Aggressive D.”

“I really thought, I mean Agnes’ defense was solid from the get-go,” VanDerveer added. “But I thought Indya Nivar brought in some great perimeter defense and so did Talana. I thought those two freshmen really stepped it up defensively for us and that’s something that we’re gonna need. We’re gonna need everyone to be really committed to playing perimeter defense. And you already alluded to it, but that’s what we lost. We lost the Lexie, Lacie aggressiveness. Anna Wilson. So that’s where people are going to have to step it up.”

At halftime, Stanford led 43-17. Brink was up to 8 points for the Cardinal while Betts had 4 points on 2-2 shooting from the field. She had a couple of nice buckets inside. Jump was leading the way with her 9 points.

“I think Lauren’s doing really well,” VanDerveer said of Betts. “She’s had some, she was sick last week. She got kinda poked in the eye, so I wasn’t even sure if she was gonna play. But, I think she gives us a whole different dimension. I mean, no one else on our team is that big. She’s got great hands; you saw her finishing around the basket. What, she five for six. She came in, she was interested in offense and she worked hard on defense, too.

"And every team we play is not gonna have little people running around. That’s harder for our big people than it is usually. But, she’s a talent and I think Kiki is really helping Lauren, learning what we’re doing, and encouraging her and I think she’s doing great. I don’t know, like you don’t like playing against her do ya?”

“No, I’m glad she’s on my team,” Iriafen said with a smile.

In the 3rd quarter, Stanford started to really turn on the jets, leading 57-17 with 5:43 to go in the quarter. Stanford was outscoring Vanguard 14-0 in the quarter as Jump (12 points) and Brink (10 points) led the way. Talana Lepolo was having a nice outing, finding Iriafen for a nice bucket in transition.

At the end of the 3rd quarter, Stanford led 73-19 as they outscored Vanguard 30-2 in the 3rd quarter. After getting off to a bit of slow start in the 1st quarter, Stanford really stomped on the Lions’ throat in the 3rd quarter.

In the 4th quarter, it was more of the same as Stanford outscored Vanguard 29-6, making it a 102-25 final score. Stanford did what they were supposed to do and won with ease while also getting everyone involved. It was par for the course, but still nice to come out and take care of business in the exhibition without anyone getting hurt. Mission accomplished.

“Yeah, it’s good to play against somebody else,” VanDerveer said of exhibitions. “And it’s good to play in front of a crowd. Like they were, they’re different than playing in practice, don’t you think? They had a different game plan, maybe. And even offensively they ran the clock down and held onto the ball and moved the ball. So it took a little bit of time for the team to adjust to it a bit.”

“Yeah, for me I was really excited to kinda start my sophomore year,” Iriafen added. “It’s really exciting playing in front of our fans and just like playing here on this court. So for me it was more so get out there, I feel like you could see some of my jitters at the beginning, but kinda just getting out there playing. A lot of excitement, though.”

Up next for Stanford is their regular season opener. That will be on Monday, November 7th at 7:00 PM PT on Stanford Live Stream.

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