Hoops history, with an Iowa twist
As Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer approaches a coaching milestone, the state’s women’s basketball teams have helped her get there (by losing, mostly)
This weekend, some big-time sports history could be made and like anything that happens in the world, of course there is an Iowa connection.
Stanford women’s basketball coach Tara VanDerveer is teetering on the brink of becoming the basketball coach with the most all-time wins – men’s or women’s game. She has 1,201 victories, one victory from tying Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski. She could tie and surpass Coach K if Stanford beats Oregon on Friday (Jan. 19) and Oregon State on Sunday (Jan. 21).
(For comparison, Iowa’s Lisa Bluder has 869 career victories, Iowa State’s Bill Fennelly has 767.)
And because VanDerveer, 70, has been around for a while playing everyone and everywhere, she has pocketed several of those victories against teams from Iowa. Without Iowa’s Division I teams, heck, VanDerveer might have to wait until March to nab that record.
In other words, teams from Iowa have been kind to VanDerveer – or perhaps maybe she hasn’t been so kind to Iowa teams. Iowa and Iowa State have combined to go 0-10 against VanDerveer’s teams.
There is, however, one notable exception: Drake carries the flag for the Hawkeye State with a victory in 1982.
To know how VanDerveer’s coaching career crosses with Iowa means going back to her early days. From 1980 to 1985, VanDerveer coached at Ohio State. She built the Buckeyes into the Big Ten’s first women’s basketball power; back then Iowa’s program struggled until it hired C. Vivian Stringer in 1983, and it took her a few years to turn around the Hawkeyes.
VanDerveer picked up two victories over the Hawkeyes in the 1982-83 season when Judy McMullen coached Iowa. VanDerveer’s Buckeyes picked up four more victories over Stringer’s Hawkeyes in the next two seasons. The next year, VanDerveer headed for Stanford. In 2010, her No. 2-ranked Cardinal bounced Lisa Bluder’s Hawkeyes from the NCAA tournament.
On VanDerveer’s final trip to Iowa City as the Buckeyes’ coach, she was part of history. From the first moment Stringer came to Iowa she vowed to fill Carver-Hawkeye Arena and on Feb. 4, 1985, in a key Big Ten matchup looming with then-No. 8 ranked Ohio State, her dream became a reality. A crowd of 22,157 people packed into the arena to set what was then an attendance record for women’s basketball. The record eventually got demoted because the official paid attendance was 14,821.
Ohio State won the game, but the Buckeyes might be the only ones who remember that detail. They knew something was up, though; they got caught in pre-game traffic.
“I said to my assistant, ‘Did church let out?’” VanDerveer told me in 1995, the 10th anniversary of the game. “She said, ‘I think they’re coming to the game.’ I said, ‘Oh my God.’”
Iowa State also had one of its seasons end with an NCAA tournament loss to Stanford, 74-53 in 2009. The Cyclones also lost to the Cardinal in the 1999 and 1986 regular seasons.
The sole Iowa team that can claim success against a VanDerveer team is Drake, when the Bulldogs were coached by Carole Baumgarten. In 1982 the NCAA sanctioned women’s sports and tournaments for the first time and Drake hosted a first-round game against Ohio State at the Fieldhouse. It was a wild, physical game.
“[Ohio State’s] Helen Abdalla was particularly aggressive against [Lorri] Bauman, and tempers flared a bit two minutes before the half,” the Des Moines Register’s Wayne Grett wrote. “Bauman looked like she was battling her way through a dense undergrowth with all the arms in front of her face.”
Bauman got the best of that Buckeye and others, scoring 34 points and making all 16 of her free throws, an NCAA tournament record that still stands. Abdalla was one of three Buckeyes who fouled out trying to guard Bauman. Only one Bulldog fouled out – Jan Krieger, better known today as the mother of NFL superstar George Kittle of the San Francisco 49ers.
VanDerveer more than got her revenge against teams from the Hawkeye State in the years that followed. And with 1,201 victories, the ones against Iowa’s teams no doubt blur into history.
Blur they may but any day now, it will be clear that no coach has done the job better than Tara VanDerveer - with a little help from the Hawkeye State.
Jane Burns is a former sports and features writer for the Des Moines Register, as well as other publications and websites. Over the course of her career she’s covered pretty much everything, which is why her as-yet-to-be-written memoir will be called “Cheese And Basketball: Stories From A Reporter Who Has Covered Everything.”
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What a great column, Jane! When you think about it, as your story has prompted me to do, Iowa has had a good 40 years of generally top-level college women's basketball. It's wonderful having you aboard the Iowa Writers Collaborative now.