STANFORD, Calif. – Tara VanDerveer was named the John R. Wooden Pac-12 Coach of the Year and Brittany McPhee the Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year on Tuesday night.
VanDerveer, who last week was honored by the WBCA with the 2018 Carol Eckman Integrity in Coaching Award, was chosen by her peers as the conference's best coach for the 15th time. It's the first conference coach of the year award she's received since a four-year run ended in 2014.
The second-winningest coach in women's college basketball history, VanDerveer put her young team through the gauntlet early. With a roster that returned just two starters and lost half of its scoring from a season ago, Stanford played five top-10 teams during the nonconference portion of its schedule and stumbled to a 6-6 mark, its worst heading into league play since 1998-99.
Those lessons paid dividends once the calendar turned to 2018 and the Cardinal finished second in the Pac-12 with a 14-3 record and secured the program's 17th consecutive 20-win season. After falling out of the AP poll for the first time since 2001 in mid-December, Stanford is back up to No. 16 and appeared among first and second-round hosts in the final top-16 tournament bracket reveal by the NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Committee on Feb. 20
One of just nine schools in the country with multiple top-25 road wins, Stanford vaulted itself back into the national conversation the with a seven-game winning streak in late January and early February. The run was highlighted by a sweep of the Cardinal's trip to Oregon where it beat the No. 16 Beavers 60-57 and No. 6 Ducks 78-65. Stanford is currently 15th in the NCAA RPI and has played the nation's sixth-toughest schedule.
McPhee is the fourth Stanford women's basketball player to be named Pac-12 Scholar-Athlete of the Year along with Chiney Ogwumike (2013-14), Kayla Pedersen (2010-11) and Jayne Appel (2009-10). Earlier today she was awarded All-Pac-12 honors for the second consecutive year after averaging career highs in points (18.5), rebounds (5.2), assists (2.5) and steals (1.3) this season.
A two-time national player of the week, McPhee has scored 20+ nine times and is one of 10 Power 5 conference guards in the country averaging 18.0 points and 5.0 rebounds. She scored 31 of her career-high 33 in Stanford's 78-65 upset at No. 6 Oregon on Feb. 4, the first 30-point road performance for a Stanford player against a top-10 team since 2007.
The senior became Stanford's 39th 1,000-point scorer in its win over No. 25 Arizona State on Jan. 26 and is currently 30th on the Cardinal's all-time scoring list with 1,185. She led the Pac-12 in scoring in the month of February, averaging 22.9 per game, which was the 19th-best mark in the country. McPhee will become the first Stanford guard to average more than 15 points per game in a season since Candice Wiggins in 2007-08 (20.2).
A human biology major with a 3.71 cumulative GPA, McPhee was voted to the CoSIDA Academic All-District first team on Feb. 22 and is now eligible to earn academic All-America honors. Last season she was honored at the 2017 Final Four as women's basketball's Elite 90 award winner, which is presented to the student-athlete with the highest grade point average participating at the finals site for each of the NCAA's 90 championships.
Stanford, the No. 2 seed in the upcoming Pac-12 Tournament, has a bye into the quarterfinals and will play the winner of No. 7 USC and No. 10 Washington State on Friday, March 2 at 6 p.m.
