← No Offseason: The Athletic Women's Basketball Show
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- [00:00]
Sunshine
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- [02:02]
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- [03:22]
Ben Pickman
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- [03:22]
Zena Keda
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- [04:57]
Tara Vanderveer
For the Athletic I'm Zena Keda and this is the Athletic Women's Basketball Show. Welcome back to the Athletic Women's Basketball Show. Appreciate you all tuning in if you are new here. We are a space in which we can talk basketball safely. You can learn, you can grow and you can find out some more about one of your favorite sports. Hopefully or Growing to be one of your favorite sports. And I think this year, the way that the women's basketball game is being covered, the way people are talking about it, the visibility, it makes sense that we're getting more and more people interested in this sport. It's super exciting. I've got Ben Pickman in the building today. We're going to talk about some of the games that happened last week. That's probably drawing up the the excitement around women's basketball because not a lot of games went the way that people expected them to, kept them exciting and then some history was made. That again feeds into why women's basketball is on the rise right now. So. Hey Ben, welcome to the show.
- [06:07]
Ben Pickman
Hey, thanks a lot for having me, Xena, of course.
- [06:10]
Tara Vanderveer
It's been a while since you and I have partnered up. I'm happy that you're here.
- [06:12]
Ben Pickman
Yeah. We should do this more often.
- [06:14]
Tara Vanderveer
We should, we should. All right. Well, I want to first look back to last week because obviously basketball has upsets and sports have upsets. It's a thing. It's happening right now in the NFL playoffs. It's happening in all types of sporting venues. But last week NCAA women's basketball wanted to put on a record. It felt like I counted 10 big upsets in the top 25. I'll just list a few of the non ranked ones. So Texas tech beat number 24, Iowa State 71, 63. Miami non ranked beat number 4, NC State 73 to 59. Syracuse and Virginia boat beat Florida State last week that was ranked at number 15. Duke beat Virginia Tech who's 1463-46. New Mexico beat number 25, UNLV 69 to 66. It was a lot last week. And that's not even all the ones. Like I said, there's some games that were ranked teams in the top 25 beating each other as well. Lower ranked teams beating higher ranked teams. Ben, honestly, this level of upsets and how often this is happening has me questioning this whole ranking systems in general. And I wanted to ask what your thoughts are on the whole thing.
- [07:35]
Ben Pickman
I think first off, it's just a reminder of the competitive balance across women's college basketball this year that there is so much talent, you know, up and down so many of these teams rosters. It's a reminder of the value of good coaching. It's the reminder of the, of the importance of the transfer portal that so many teams can fill gaps so quickly in the off season and then they come around in the fall and they look really Strong and really talented and really deep because they're able to in essence cherry pick some of the best kind of smaller conference, non major conference players off of some of these teams and really bolster their own rosters. I think it's a reminder of that as well. It's also just a reminder that like this is basketball and in the course of a 30 plus game season, a good team or a great team is going to lose to a good team some nights because they're going to have an off shooting night, or another team's going to have a good shooting night, or they're just going to turn the ball over a little bit more than they do on average. And you know, this is something we see in the professional game all the time. We don't really make that big of a deal of it in the professional game, whether it's the NBA or the WNBA when upsets happen. But you know, it's why personally I don't make that much of a big deal when I see like a number 17 team in the country lose to a number 21 team in the country because we don't really know what that means. And you know, these things are so volatile and so fluid. So, you know, it just speaks though, big picture to the talent across the sport and the excitement around it though.
- [09:00]
Tara Vanderveer
I love it. It's so true. The parody that you're starting to see within women's basketball, or just basketball in general, but particularly women's basketball, is so apparent. And it is also a great reminder of just conference play, right, and just how competitive it is. And when, when you're talking about good coaching. These coaches are watching each other. They've been watching each other throughout the preseason. They've been watching their film and all the above and making sure that their, their players are prepared. And then you think about players that aren't freshmen. They've been playing up against these competitors in their conference for a while. They know how to guard their opposing team. And so that makes a lot of sense. And it's true, you gotta watch out with the ranking sometimes because people put a lot of power into them. And then on one night someone looks human and someone looks a little bit, you know, less than their number. But out of the games that were upsets last week and again there were more than I listed, were there any that you were like particularly like surprised by or even some that you were like, I knew that was going to happen.
- [09:59]
Ben Pickman
I mean, I'm not in the prediction business, I will say that. But the ones that continue to impress me or that I've been drawn to in the last week. And just teams that I've watched a lot of throughout the season. It's just what's going on in the PAC 12. And you see the talent out there and I know you're west coast based, you know, so lucky you for watching these games and still going to bed at a reasonable hour. I sometimes have to watch them back in the morning if I want to get to sleep at a reasonable hour on the East Coast. But focusing on what, you know, Colorado and UCLA, that was one. Just in terms of AP ranking, seedline upsets. We see UCLA who had lost to USC. They come back and they beat Colorado in Colorado 76, 68. I thought, you know, that was a really, really impressive game for ucla. And I continue to think, you know, they're kind of underrated in my mind. I still think they might be the best team in the country. I find their depth and, you know, experience to be so appealing. Right. They have, I want to say, five players who average double figures, six who average at least nine points per game. They have, you know, five players who average five plus rebounds per game. This is a team that defensively is one of the best teams in the country. Their 93rd percentile defensive rating, their 98th percentile offensive rating, we saw them have success last year. They had all these players return. They continue to look good. Lauren Betts, the addition of her as we were talking about in the transfer portal, I think against the Colorado Buffalo, I want to say she had 20 and 13 as a double double, like really, really efficient on the inside. Against the Colorado team that has some, some impressive bigs, one of the, some of the best bigs or tandems in the country. So I thought that was just a really impressive performance by UCLA. If we go to another team in the Pac12, a game that caught my eye, it's Utah and USC. Alyssa Peely continues. I think, as you mentioned, I think that's the right reaction right in that game. 78, 58, a really convincing win for the Utes. They jumped out to a 10 point lead at the start of the second quarter and they really never looked back. I think I saw in Utah, they said it was the largest margin of victory over a top 10 team in school history. Alyssa Peely, she tied a career high of 37 points and she was 13 of 16 from the field. She got anything going that she wanted. Truly was an unstoppable force against USC. Efficient from everywhere inside the arc, 5 of 6 from 36 of 8 from the free throw line. How could you not be impressed by Utah coming out of that one? Because we've seen USC be so impressive throughout the year. That was a real statement performance by them.
- [12:23]
Tara Vanderveer
I thought it was very telling that someone tweeted, you know, Alyssa Peely does well against teams with the initials usc. And I thought that was really funny. And I was like, ah, it's true. It's very true. No, she was monstrous against her old school. And for those of you that don't know, that is where Alyssa Peeley started her college career was at University of Southern California. So she had to go home and make sure she, you know, people remembered who she was. That was an amazing game. And it's true. I think the Pac 12 has been putting on a show this year, and it is just so interesting that it's in the last year. And I feel like you could have said the same thing about the college football season. Go. And then you're going into this, this season with the women's basketball, and it's just like this farewell tour has been unreal. And I'm happy we're talking about the PAC 12 because there was something that happened yesterday at the time that we're recording this. But I was at the game when coach Tara Van Der Veer of Stanford University made history and became the all time winningest NCAA coach, men's or women's basketball, period. She got 1,203 wins with their win over Oregon State. 65, 56. It was a packed arena. Packed arena. And the, the energy in there was just everyone kind of anticipating what they already knew they felt was gonna happen, but just waiting to be inspired by this win and waiting to see the culmination of, you know, Tara's career. But the funny thing is she's still coaching. She's. And you know, she has no, no indication of stopping anytime soon. It was very cool to be in the building for that win. But you just wrote about Tara, Ben, and you actually, you wrote about the. The coaching career before. The coaching career that's been counting at least. And you talked a little bit about it to her when we interviewed her last week. If you guys had not gone to listen to that interview, definitely go check it out. It starts with some really terrible jokes from me, but then Ben and Chantel clean it up and have a great conversation with Tara and Kiki. But you also wrote about her. And I just wanted to know, like, in your experience, as you were kind of researching for that piece and putting that piece Together. Like, was there anything that was particularly special to you that you learned about Tara?
- [14:54]
Ben Pickman
There was a lot I learned. I mean, I think the whole thing was a quest to try and learn more. I'll just give you the backstory because I think some people like the inside baseball stuff on this story. So I had been going thinking about some ideas related to Tara Vandiver. Chantel Jennings, my colleague who wrote a great also story on Tara, went out to Palo Alto and spent some time with her. And I went back and I reread parts of her memoir, she or an autobiography that she wrote or co wrote in the late 1990s after the Olympic run, just to try and understand her a little bit more and see what was interesting that I could pick out. And early on in the book, she talks about, you know, her journey and how she ended up getting to Ohio State and then her time at Stanford. And she has this little paragraph, it's like two sentences in the entire book where she talks about how she coached at Ohio State as an assistant. And while being an assistant, she was also the head coach of the junior varsity team there. And she used the phrase that they were her guinea pigs, that they went eight no. And that they scored 90 points per game. And I started to do some research and I really could find absolutely nothing on that experience. But the notion of an origin story and this team of guinea pigs that went undefeated was super interesting for that. If we're going to continue to get inside baseball, I reached out to the people at Ohio State. The program knew very little about it and had no information. I reached out to a library archivist at the Ohio State Libraries and their collections, and they were definitely more helpful and dug around for some articles. But like, the student paper didn't really write about this at all. So it was really a quest to try and find some players and other coaches who were involved with it. And big picture like this was a really formative experience for her. Tara Vandeveer, for those who don't know. Yes, she's won, as you mentioned, 1203 games right now. But initially, when she finished her playing career at Indiana, she thought about applying for law school. She wasn't really sure what she wanted to do the following year. She took time. She sailed competitively in South Carolina. She told me she refereed volleyball matches in Florida. She had added that she did it very poorly. And she eventually returned to her parents home in Niagara Falls at the time and helped out with her sister's high school basketball team before she got this job at Ohio State. And there she just coached this JV team, and they were like. They were the experiment for her. She could just try anything out that she wanted. She had done all this reading all these books, worked at camps, just had been a basketball nut. And finally she had a team that she could call her own, and she really led them, and there was a lot of conditioning involved. That was a big thing that I learned. But it was a really formative experience in that it laid the foundation for just her and what she then was able to do at Idaho. Because as she told me in the story, and it's. The last quote in the story is that, you know, those wins don't count, but it helped me in terms of already being a head coach. She said, quote, it wasn't official, but I had already done the job. Um, and I think that's something, you know, the 1203 is just varsity head coach numbers. But if you asked Tara VanDever, like, those eight wins she had as an Ohio State JV head coach were also super significant, too.
- [17:52]
Tara Vanderveer
Oh, I bet. And I wonder, oh, God, I wish we could find out who was on that team, because I wonder how many of the. The same tenets of her coaching, you know, ran through that first team. And did she talk about that at all with you or in the book, even?
- [18:09]
Ben Pickman
Yeah, I mean, not in the book. I did talk to a few of the players on the team, and, yeah, they see some similarities, for sure. I mean, they talk about her demeanor, right? That was one thing that both a player and another assistant coach on that team who, you know, you talk about, you know, doing two jobs at once. Tara was unpaid as an assistant that year. She also worked at a rec center checking in IDs. The other assistant coach at Ohio State who helped her out was like a. I think he taught business education at a local high school, and his niece was a member of the varsity team, also unpaid. But they talk about her demeanor, that she wasn't the center of attention on the sideline, for instance, that she certainly was passionate, but she had a calm temperament, that she was reserved yet involved. And I think that's something that is true today, that she was disciplined and consistent and ran an efficient practice, tried to connect with players. You know, I mentioned that note about the rec center. A lot of players gravitated towards her in that setting at that time. She's not that much older than them. She was 23 at the time. I still think today, you know, obviously, she's a lot older at this point right now. And Certainly has a lot more wins behind her in national championships, but we still see young players gravitate towards her. That was something that Kiki Eriofan, when we had her on the pod, talked a lot about. So there's a lot of similarities between then and now, and I think that's why it was an interesting story to explore.
- [19:31]
Tara Vanderveer
Oh, for sure. That's amazing. I definitely encourage all of you to check that piece out. While I was at the game, and it was also alumni weekend. And so you saw all of these people that had played under Coach Tara for decades come back, and they all had their different families and, I mean, all ages. Right? I mean, she's been at this for decades. And this was just Stanford, so this isn't going all the way back to Ohio State or Idaho and the other schools that she's been a part of. Like, it was just Stanford, and all of them were so proud to have been a part of this legacy. And, you know, I'm not sure what everyone else's experience is like with their coaches. You know, some people love their teams rather than coaches. Some people love their. Their coaching, you know, the things that they learned from their coaches. But maybe they didn't have a great school experience. But it was very beautiful to see the amount of players that were there and fully enthralled by the whole experience of supporting their coach, being happy and being a part of the Sanford experience. And how many of them attributed that to Tara and I. And you're in talking to the people that you spoke to, I imagine that that's like, the sentiment is that people are so grateful to Tara for the way that she showed up for them, whether it was as a Team USA coach, whether it was in college, whether it was for their families. A lot of them talked about. Some of the alumni were talking about just, like, how she kept making promises to their parents. Right. Of wanting to take care of them beyond just the four years. When we talked to Kiki, she talked about the handwritten note. You know, it's really cool to see a coach be able to have that impact across generations of people. Just being like, I'm grateful to Tara for who I am or how I play or my experience at Stanford. Like, it was really cool to also have that as a part of the wins.
- [21:18]
Ben Pickman
Did you see last night, like, in the. In the building on Sunday, Xena, from someone who was there? Was there a little bit of nerves or, like, tension, you know, obviously can't bring. She does not play in. In Sunday's game after going down with a knee injury on Friday night, though it doesn't seem to be too, too serious from what the school made it seem like yesterday. But they're tied 1010 after the first quarter. Not exactly a high scoring affair. There's a lot at stake. There's. We see a beautiful Nike jacket that is somewhere in the back being waiting to be brought out. There's a whole ceremony. There's all the alums, there's video packages. You know, this is a. This is a big day for Stanford. They want it to go well because their next game is on the road at Arizona State on Friday. What was the feeling like in the arena after 10, 10 in the first quarter, knowing so much was at stake?
- [22:13]
Tara Vanderveer
Well, I mean, a lot of the people in this, in the crowd, were fans that have been there for decades, right? And of course, the alums were there and there were other people in the building, too, but, like, there were people that I spoke to, a few people in the crowd. They'd been season ticket holders for 15 years, 20 years, 30 years. And they weren't concerned, like, at all. Like, they were so confident and like, oh, they'll pull this out. They'll pull this out. I ain't gonna lie to you. As somebody that did not graduate from Stanford and was there as. Just like the media, I was concerned because the shots that Stanford was putting up were short and they were long, and there was nothing like it was. They were struggling in between. The only person that was really finding a way to connect was Keke. And let's just be real, out of the, you know, 60 plus points that they put up, Keke had half of them. And so you think about, if she wasn't able to connect, this game could have easily went the other way. But what I loved, and I think this is kind of the moment, if there were nerves that I wasn't picking up where I was sitting, but if there were nerves, there's a moment in the game in the third quarter where Kiki hits two threes in a row, which, if you guys don't know, that actually was her first threes of the season. And she hits her three, a corner three. She kisses her fingers. She's got the threes up on both fingers with her thumbs, you know, like doing the three, you know, the typical basketball three. Not with the first three fingers, with the last three with the pinkies up. And she kisses both of them to her lips and then blows them towards Tara. And Tara takes them back, right? She grabs both of them back and the whole arena erupts. It was just like, this is for you, Tara. I've never hit a three or, this is not my game, but I'm gonna make it for you. And she does that now. They got scored on the immediate next play, but then she does it again. She hits another three, right? She scored eight straight points. And I feel like that allowed the arena to kind of like, okay, Keke's about to go off. They're about to be in a better place. But I think everyone was just like, it has to happen. It has to happen. There's. There's no way in which this is not going to happen. But I give credit to Oregon State, particularly Reagan Beers. That freshman, she, I mean, easily probably should have had 40 points in that game, but they battled and they made it tough on Tara. And what you saw was Tara's teams over the years that I've seen, they're methodical and they're patient and they particularly have bigs. They do well with their bigs and they go to their bigs. And that's what you saw. You saw them profit off of which Kiki. Kiki was the savior of that game for sure. But, yeah, they felt confident. I felt like everyone in the building was just like, it has to be today. There is no other way that it's happening.
- [25:04]
Ben Pickman
So it was funny, interesting, and, you know, Reagan Bierce, 18 and 10 for Oregon State. She played. She played great and really kept the game as close or made it as close as it was. You know, I think it was so telling in the post game that Tara, after, you know, all these festivities and everything that had happened on court, you know, she really, this moment was about her and her accomplishment. And, you know, we certainly went, you know, all in at the Athletic and wrote a whole number of stories and had her on the podcast, as we've alluded, but she really deflected all that attention back to her players and gave them so much credit. Even, you know, even this team, this ongoing, you know, process of a team that is in development, not even a national championship team yet. Right. She talked about, you know, just how she was appreciative of. Of them and the players and the coaches and the support system. And, you know, she talked about, I think the quote was that she's learned 100 times more from all the players that I've coached than, you know, they've learned from me. You know, that was something she really harked on a lot in her post game comments. And every time she was kind of asked a question about what does this mean? What's the significance of it? Can you reflect on your legacy? You could see and she admitted to not always being comfortable in the limelight or not being a self promoter. You could see she spotted and talked about leadership and the sisterhood of the program and all the alums. And she acknowledged she's like, this record will be broken one day. You know, she was pretty open about that too. Now, you know, we'll see if it's coming soon or down the line. It depends on how long she coaches and how long Gino Oremma coaches. But, you know, she was just effusive in her praise of this group of past groups and, and stressing that this was built on their shoulders. And I thought that was a really telling moment on a day that was so significant in the sports history and.
- [26:48]
Tara Vanderveer
For her and even making sure to take the moment when she got the mic on the court to give credit to osu, you know, and to tell them like, you know, they. Of how great they played and how good of a program they are. And what I love was Raz Goranbude had the privilege of hosting the ceremony afterwards. And she mentioned this and she said it three times, emphatically. Tara is so humble. Tara is so, so humble. And she was saying it that way because she's like, f all that, we are going to celebrate it for her. Like, we are going to. We are going to make sure that she gets the adulation and she gets the celebration that she deserves. And it was funny because as she said it, all the alums were laughing. So it clearly is an inside joke around just how humble Tara is. And you could see that. But I feel like she couldn't even just hold it for herself. She was just like finding every single person that she could to hug and high five and make sure that they were brought along in the celebration and the focal point on her, she wanted to make sure that everyone shared in with her. She was giving kisses to the guards even. I mean, the, you know, the, the security on the court. It was, it was a really, really cool moment to have witnessed. And yeah, just for you guys to know, as Ben mentioned, Gino Auriemma is at 1196, so he's not too far behind Tara. But as far as we know, the record will stay within women's basketball. A women's basketball coach for now, right? Because Coach K is retired unless he comes out of retirement anytime soon. But no, it's, it's really cool that we got to be a part of that. And I'M happy that you got that story about how she started and laid the foundation of her career. So congratulations to Coach Tara. Congratulations to every single Stanford Cardinal player that got to be a part of that legacy, as well as her players at Idaho State. And it's just really cool that anyone that's been in her path, whether you're a coach that played against her, you're a player that played against her, you're a player that played for her or coached a coach alongside her, I feel like every single person has been able to learn something from from her and that is a wonderful legacy to be able to leave behind. So with that, I want to switch it on over and go off the script. For today's off the script, I have to bring Ben in to talk about this TCU drama. I don't know if you've seen it, I don't know if you've been paying attention, but just a few Weeks ago TCU was 1 undefeated and 2 ranked top 25. At one point they were ranked number 23 in the country. Yeah, that's changed and it's changed quite drastically. They've gone from again 140 at one point in the season, number 23 in the country, to now having to host open tryouts for their Division 1 NCAA women's basketball team. And I'll first break it down like what exactly happened? Basically they had a ton of injuries in a very short period of time, starting with their star player, Oregon transfer Sedona Prince. She broke her finger on their January 3rd game against undefeated also Baylor at that time and it was in within the first seven seconds of the game according to her TikTok that she didn't see a pass coming and a ball was passed and she shattered her ring finger. So they lose that game against Baylor, they lose two more without her because again she was the player for them. And then in the next two weeks after that they lose their top point guard which was Jaden Owens. She tears her ACL and meniscus on a non contact play in practice. And then right after that their backup center to Sedona Deja Turner gets an MRI on her ankle and realizes she needs season ending surgery. And then there were other players, four other players. This is what Sedona Prince mentioned in her TikTok again that also have either been dealing with injuries, health issues and some left campus because of family stuff and that's seven players right there on a Division 1 roster. Can't use them. So what happens? TCU needs tryouts. I've never ever Ever heard of this happening in the ncaa? In recent NCAA history? Back in the day when Title IX was just the new thing, tryouts was normal. You talk to anybody that was playing Division 1 basketball at that time, they talk often about being multi sport athletes. You played on one team, et cetera. If you were free during basketball season, they'd ask you to try out. That's normal. But in the days of recruitment and especially now with the transfer Porter and Nil and all these things where spots are coveted on these Division 1 teams, this is new territory. So Ben, I want to ask you one what do you know about a situation like this? Have you heard of anything like this before? And I understand you know a little bit about the first result of like the new person that's joined their team so far.
- [32:01]
Ben Pickman
Yeah, I do. Can I spin one question back at you, zenith? Do you have any eligibility and or do you have any plans to move to TCU and play basketball for them?
- [32:10]
Tara Vanderveer
I am way too old and my knees are absolutely. My knees will be on the same level as those seven other players. And that means needs to go home or sit out. No, but thank you for asking. I appreciate you.
- [32:20]
Ben Pickman
No problem. Just had to think about our teammate here first. We wouldn't want to lose you to tcu, but if it meant you getting some run and you wanted to do it for it, so. Yeah. So as you mentioned, it's been a crazy time at tcu and that's probably an understatement since the calendar turned over to 2024. You did a good job of mapping out, you know, all the injuries and uncertainty and I'm sure their training room has been, you know, just. Their trainers have done a really good job and I'm sure working nonstop to work on the players with the program. Yeah. So TCU sent out a release on Sunday evening as it related to one of the players that they have added. And it's one of the. I don't know if it's just a crazy release that you. It's a little surreal to. To read it. And, and what it reads is that they've added Sarah Sylvester, who is a sophomore middle blocker on the Horned Frogs volleyball team to its roster for the remainder of the season. She's a preferred walk on invitation to the team they had, as you mentioned, they held open tryouts on Thursday and Friday in search of walk on candidates. And so Sylvester, here's a little bit about her. She is first and foremost the first TCU student athlete in since they joined the Big 12 to play varsity basketball and volleyball. She was also a high school basketball player. She is from Michigan. Initially she averaged, it says in their release 11 points, almost seven and a half rebounds and two and a half blocks per game in her senior year. She earned all Catholic High School league honors as a junior and senior. And so that's where the basketball information stops. And what the rest of the release goes into is her volleyball statistics, which are impressive. And TCU volleyball had a good run in the NCAA tournament. She led the TCU and ranked 6 in the Big 12 in blocks per set. They say I'm not a big college volleyball, college volleyball watcher. I will admit I certainly keep up with it and watch it here and there. But you know, certainly impressive numbers as they map out. But it's just kind of surreal to see them touting her volleyball statistics in a basketball related relationship. And yes, I think, of course there are some similarities there. She is 6:3, so you certainly can't teach height on either sport. But yeah, a unique situation to say the least. One they certainly did not imagine themselves getting into. I guess my, my biggest question, and maybe you have some thoughts on this is just like, I wonder about the social dynamic here, right? Like, these are all college students. Oftentimes on these college campuses you have a lot of friends between, you know, basketball team in the volleyball team, volleyball team and the soccer team, soccer team in the softball team and the baseball team. And like, what is going on? And I would just love to be a fly on the wall on some of these group texts or personal texts about like players texting each other, like to try and like, did someone have to convince Sarah Sylvester to try out? You know, she friends with basketball players who she like plays pickup with in the summer. You know, like, was this fully out of the blue? There's just a lot of questions. Hopefully I get some answers to these questions. But, you know, there's just a fun social dynamic in what is of course a serious and unfortunate situation that have emerged about having a volleyball player, a college, you know, scholarship volleyball player, now be on the basketball team. I don't know what your reaction to any of that and all of that.
- [35:31]
Tara Vanderveer
Is, you know, I definitely have thoughts, especially from my own experience. I've almost, I forgot the biggest part of this even before the tryouts. So that release came out to say, you know, we're having open tryouts, you have to have played high school basketball. So shout out Sarah for having that.
- [35:47]
Ben Pickman
That's, you know, prerequisite.
- [35:49]
Tara Vanderveer
Yeah, right, that prerequisite ticked. But they had to cancel two games as a result of this. They could not play against Iowa State and Kansas State as a result of their injuries. So that's another, you know, portion to it is that they needed players because they need to be able to resume their season. And so that's. It is huge that, you know, Sarah Sylvester has already joined. That's a positive. Now from the volleyball basketball perspective, as a person that was a volleyball player and a basketball player, the similarities small in the sense of it's great, it is wonderful to be a big and to have played volleyball and particularly to be a middle blocker because your, your acuity when it comes to blocking shots is high. As a person that was a middle blocker and a left outside hitter, like, it's, it is nice to be able to time jumps perfectly, but you also have to be careful because you're so used to wanting to swat everything, you get in foul trouble. So we'll see how, you know, she's able to restrain her arms. She might do a lot of that whole swing down, arm back up. We've all seen it. We've seen the centers act like they didn't do anything. But yeah, that's a positive from a defensive perspective, from a conditioning perspective, this is where things might get interesting. And a physicality perspective because the thing about volleyball that's so nice and lovely and fun is that you're on your side of the net and you're cheering and everything's so great. And every time you hit, you're just like, woo. Oh my God. Yes. It's just like a positive, great sport. I love volleyball, by the way. It's like, I love it, but you got to be a little bit mean on the basketball court. You got to have a little rough too, like, you know, little edge to you. So from a social dynamic, it's definitely going to be a lot of, hey, every time somebody, you know, shoots a basket or makes a basket, makes a bucket, it's not cheering all the time. But Sarah knows that she played basketball, she gets it. But I just remember our volleyball team at Yale being so, so animated if they came to our games with any basket we made and it's like, no, no, no, that's, that's part of the plan. Like, we gotta make. We got. Hopefully we've got about 25 more of these to make, but. So that'll be interesting just to see how she gets acclimated to a different personality, I guess from a team perspective. At Yale, the women's basketball locker room and the women's volleyball locker room were directly across from each other. So we would walk into a door, and you either went left or you went right. Based on the team that you were in, there are so many. I just love that you brought this up because there are so many elements that are very different when it comes to volleyball teams and basketball teams, especially depending on the school you're at. But the music that's played in the locker rooms, very different. The openness event, I remember. I don't even know if I should share this or not, but, hey, whatever, it's cool. We're a women's basketball podcast. But I remember learning that the women's volleyball team had taken all of their shower curtains down, and we on the women's basketball side were like, why, did something happen? And they're like, no, we just, like, love each other. And it's just like, we didn't want any barriers. And you were like, oh, very different, like, personality to a team than us. But I think that that's going to be a dynamic that, you know, Sarah's going to have to adjust to is what is the women's basketball team personality like versus the women's volleyball team? We definitely are friends. A lot of the people sometimes that are basketball players played volleyball, so there's usually that similarity and that love in between. I don't know what TCU's teams are like, but I imagine more than anything, it's not necessarily going to be a social, like, are we friends or not? But it's going to be a personality shift. What's the pregame routine like? You know, what are the teams like on the buses? All these different things or aspects to each individual team is so unique. And so, I don't know, I think I'm kind of. I'm excited for Sarah to have both.
- [39:40]
Ben Pickman
Experiences and just a schedule shift, right? You just think about the mindset of a student athlete. You know, in college, certainly you've, you know, heading into, you know, in August, say that your fall semester, you're going to have some travel to Oklahoma State and to Houston and to Iowa State. You're going to play road matches with these schools against these schools, rather UCF, which is TSU's next game on Tuesday night. But now joining the basketball team, suddenly it's like, you know, you. I wonder how much do you have to alter your class schedule? Like, what other social plans, you know, change? And you talked about kind of conditioning and how, you know, she's coming off a season. So, like, you know, she's certainly Been in game shape. But I also wonder, like, you know, not only is the condition different, but, like, are you doing different things to your body to prepare, or it's just like kind of in your mental cycle of like, you finished a season, maybe you relaxed a little bit, maybe you focused on some off season training that suddenly now she's thrown back into a season and look, we don't know how much she's gonna play, what her role is gonna be.
- [40:43]
Tara Vanderveer
Sure.
- [40:43]
Ben Pickman
Inevitably, like, we'll see how all this shakes out. There's a lot of questions, but, like, now you're traveling to Norman, Oklahoma for a game on February 7th, you're going to Cincinnati, you know, in mid February, you're playing BYU on the road. Like, these are all things that when you looked at your winter semester, you did not have planned. And now, as a preferred walk on, you're a member of the team, and we'll see how it goes. And, you know, hopefully TCU can, can rally and come together and. And look more like the team that they were in the first half of the season than they have been this last couple these last few days and last few weeks. So.
- [41:21]
Tara Vanderveer
Absolutely.
- [41:22]
Ben Pickman
Yeah, it's. It's a pretty surreal story in college basketball right now.
- [41:26]
Tara Vanderveer
Sarah, we gotta get you on the show because I do want to know how different your weights are. It looked very different when I was in the weight room with the volleyball team sometimes, but I agree with you. I do hope that TCU is able to bounce back. It's such an unfortunate situation that they've, you know, found themselves in, but it could make for a really cool story, like, especially if they are able to bounce back. So wish them all the luck, but appreciate you, Ben. We had to break that down because that was such a unique story. Thank you all for listening today. Congratulations again to coach Tara Vanderveer on her amazing accomplishment. Definitely. Go check out our episode with her on the Athletic Women's basketball show and the pieces on the Athletic that Ben and Chantelle wrote on both of them. But thank you all so much. Make sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast to continue listening. And we're going to have some interesting interviews coming up. You know, free agencies right around the corner. It's NCAA season, but we're not forgetting about the W. Don't worry. All right, folks, this is Zena KA for the Athletic, encouraging you to keep listening, keep learning, and keep loving the game, because that's the only way we're going to keep growing it. Until next time.
- [42:38]
Ben Pickman
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Ben Pickman
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- [43:58]
Tara Vanderveer
Acast powers the world's best podcasts. Here's a show that we recommend. Hey guys. Welcome to Giggly Squad, a place where.
- [44:08]
Ben Pickman
We make fun of everything but most importantly ourselves. I'm Paige desorbo.
- [44:12]
Tara Vanderveer
I'm Hannah Burner.
- [44:13]
Ben Pickman
Welcome to welcome to the Squad.
- [44:14]
Tara Vanderveer
Giggly Squad started on Summer House when.
- [44:16]
Ben Pickman
We were giggling during an inappropriate time. But of course we can't be managed.
- [44:21]
Tara Vanderveer
So we decided to start this podcast to continue giggling.
- [44:23]
Ben Pickman
We will make fun of pop culture news. We're watching Fashion trends pep talks where we give advice, mental health moments and games and guests. Listen to Giggly Squad on Acast or.
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Tara Vanderveer
Wherever you get your podcasts.
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Zena Keda
Acast helps creators launch, grow and monetize their podcasts everywhere.
- [44:43]
Ben Pickman
Acast.com.