Stuck in the middle of March Madness
Former Iowa State star Stacy Frese caught between her alma mater and the team her sister coaches
Like before any vacation, Stacy Frese Huber wasn’t sure earlier this week what to pack to take to California because she wasn’t sure what she would be wearing.
It was a conundrum for the former Iowa State women’s basketball star because while she’s off to see her alma mater play in the NCAA tournament on Friday, the Cyclones will be playing another team to which she is deeply connected: Maryland, coached by her older sister Brenda.
“The good thing is, I’ll have a team no matter what in the second round,” said Huber, who lives in her hometown of Cedar Rapids with her husband and three children. “Honestly, it was bound to happen at some point.”
It’s probably not surprising that two good programs would meet in the tournament, but what’s unique about this is it’s the first round. Maryland, the 2006 national champion and often a high seed in the tournament, is a No. 10 seed. Iowa State, which took a little while for its freshmen to mesh this season, is No. 7.
“We were watching with two of our kids [wondering about Maryland] and my husband looked over at me and said, ‘Iowa State?’” Huber said, “and I said, ‘Good lord … .’”
The connection between the two teams goes well beyond Stacy and Brenda. When Bill Fennelly came to Iowa State in 1995, he hired Brenda Frese as an assistant.
At the time, Stacy was playing for at Iowa. But after her freshman year she transferred to Iowa State, sat out a year because of NCAA rules and joined the Cyclones for the 1997-98 season. Fennelly and his staff were transforming Iowa State from a cellar-dweller that played in front of a smattering of fans to a program that got to experience its own Hilton Magic with large crowds.
It’s a time many people simply don’t remember because of the Cyclones’ sustained success, something Brenda Frese has experienced too. She left Iowa State in 1999 to take the head coaching job at Ball State. She then went to Minnesota and in her one season there turned around a moribund program (which included future Hall of Famer Lindsay Whalen) and was named national coach of the year before heading to Maryland in 2002.
“It’s not surprising to me that both have been successful for so long,” Huber said. “He started it, she emulated it and has continued.”
For Huber, playing for her sister was a thrill. With seven years between them, they had never really played basketball together much except when little Stacy would bug Brenda and Marsha, two years younger than Brenda, to play with them in the driveway. They didn’t always say yes.
The three sisters played at Cedar Rapids Washington and all played collegiately. Brenda played at Arizona, Marsha at Rice. Marsha also went into coaching and is currently a Loyola Chicago assistant.
“I wanted to be like them – I wanted to be better than them,” Huber said. “They pushed me, then they went off to college and I spent all my time out in the driveway working.”
Huber’s sharp-shooting game was perfect for the offense that Fennelly brought to Iowa State. With teammates Megan Taylor, Monica Huelman and Angie Welle, they played a fun style and had NCAA success – including an upset of No. 1 Connecticut in 1999 to earn a spot in the Elite Eight.
Huber said despite the age difference, she and Brenda had always been close, even sharing a room growing up. That relationship didn’t change when Brenda became her coach.
“My teammates are still my best friends and they loved her,” Huber said. “They respected her and she could push them. They never complained to me about her and vice versa. I loved it.”
But of course, sisters do have a way of being able to push each other’s buttons and that happened with the Freses at least once.
Huber doesn’t recall exactly which game it was but thinks it might have been during the NCAA tournament. She wasn’t playing very well and headed for the bench for a rest.
“When I sat down Brenda said, ‘You need to pull your head out of your ass,’” Huber said, still laughing at the memory. “I was like, ‘WHAT?!?’ It worked, obviously. We came back and won.”
Huber knows about coaching family now. Her daughter Sydney is a high school junior and Huber has coached her AAU team since fourth grade. Huber also coaches the team of Lauren, a fifth-grader. (She’s thankful her 15-year-old son Will prefers fishing and baseball.) Huber’s sisters remain her mentors, as she’ll hit them up for help from time to time.
“I’ll text them and say, ‘Can you send me a good out-of-bounds play?’’’ she said.
Huber, three-time all-Big 12 player and a member of Iowa State’s athletic hall of fame, played one season with the WNBA’s Utah Starzz and in France. She now owns her own business, Frese Appraisals.
The Freses will have a family reunion in Palo Alto and if Huber isn’t certain what she’ll wear (maybe red, to cover both schools’ colors), she knows where she’ll be sitting.
“I’ll be on the Maryland side because of course I’ll sit with my mom,” she said. “It’ll definitely be weird, that’s for sure. But blood is pretty strong.”
Beyond the weirdness of it all, Huber looks on the bright side: No matter what, a team she loves will win what she expects to be a very good game.
“It’s March Madness,” she said. “It’s all good.”
A weekend full of Madness
Because searching for tournament information online can be like following one of those maps that marks the path that Billy from The Family Circus takes when he comes home from school, here’s a summation of when/where the Iowa women’s teams play in the NCAA tournament this weekend.
Drake: vs. Colorado in Manhattan, Kan., 6 p.m, Friday, ESPNews. If the Bulldogs win, they’d play the Kansas State-Portland winner at K-State on Sunday (time TBA).
Iowa State: vs. Maryland in Palo Alto, Calif., 6:30 p.m., Friday, ESPN2. If the Cyclones win, they’d play the Stanford-Norfolk State winner at Stanford on Sunday (time TBA).
Iowa: vs. the winner of Thursday night’s Holy Cross-UT Martin game on Saturday in Iowa City, 2 p.m., ABC. If the Hawkeyes win, they’d play the West Virginia-Princeton winner on Monday (time TBA) in Iowa City.
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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That's the thing about women's basketball in the State of Iowa, we're all connected in some way or another. I can't wait for tonight's games. I only wish the Drake men had won last night - so close. Even as a Cyclone, I'm rooting for both ISU and Drake tonight (Friday).
Love this story. The family dynamic between coaches and kids/siblings/relatives has always fascinated me. Crappy that Drake and ISU are in the same time slot.