NCAA Basketball stanford Cardinal

When Connecticut ran through the 2008-09 season with a 39-0 record and cruised through the Final Four to a national title, they turned an entire season, thousands of games involving hundreds of teams, into an exercise in inevitability.

At the cusp of a new college season, the biggest question is: Can the Huskies do that again? Or will the search for a new point guard to replace Renee Montgomery will bring UConn back to the pack?

Connecticut is the undisputed No. 1 team in the nation at its start, the unanimous choice in both national polls. But, of course. The Huskies have Maya Moore and Tina Charles, two of the top three or four players in the country, they have outstanding role players such as Kalnna Greene and Kaili McLaren. They have Geno Auriemma, who embraces the role of front-runner in a big, enthusiastic bear hug.

Tara VanDerveer, right, has been coaching for nearly 30 years. She doesn't think she's recruited siblings before. So as new experiences go, it's worked out pretty well.

Chiney Ogwumike, a 6-foot-3 forward from Texas and the No. 1-rated recruit in the country, signed her national letter of intent to play at Stanford on Thursday. Chiney will join her older sister Nneka, who is a sophomore forward for the No. 2-ranked Cardinal. Ogwumike chose Stanford over Connecticut and Notre Dame.

Dunks in women's basketball have been like meteors in the night sky, fleeting moments of excitement, flashes that fade quickly until the next one shows up. Six women have dunked in a college game, totaling 15 dunks.

When a dunk happens, it makes the highlight reel, sparks a brief discussion about the impact on the women's game and then fades away again.

But along comes Baylor's Brittney Griner, who promises a meteor shower. It's no overstatement to say that Griner will change the women's game beginning Sunday when the seventh-ranked Bears take on No. 8 Tennessee in Knoxville in the State Farm Tip-off Classic.

Part of the beauty of college basketball is that it isn't like college football. The top teams don't have to be afraid of playing a tough opponent; worried that risking a single loss would derail a season's worth of effort.

Instead, the best teams in college basketball want to cut their teeth on one another, learn from their shortcomings, shore up before spring, or build a resume for the NCAA committee by collecting wins against stiff competition.

The following is a list of the top five schedules in women's college basketball this season. These teams are going to do it the hard way. And you gotta admire that.

Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins may not be the unluckiest man in college basketball right now, but with the way his luck is turning, he can probably get the poor sap that is to buy him a beer.

On the day Dawkins received a verbal commitment from the prize of his 2010 recruiting class, the second-year Cardinal coach watched Andy Brown, the star of the 2009 class go down with a knee injury. Monday night, the school confirmed that the ACL tear will cost Brown the season.

"This is an unfortunate loss for our program and I know how much of a disappointment this is for Andy," Dawkins said. "Andy had worked very hard leading up to the start of practice and we were expecting him to contribute this year. I wish him well in his recovery and look forward to having him back next season."

For Brown, a mobile 6-foot-8 forward who starred at Southern California basketball power Mater Dei, the injury was the second ACL tear in 10 months.

For Stanford, an all-but-certain shoo-in for the back of the line in Pac-10 predictions, it was another blow to the immediate future of the program.

In recent weeks, Tara VanDerveer's go-to line about Jayne Appel and JJ Hones has been: "If we had a game today, they'd be playing." But instead, Stanford had its first official practice of the season on Friday night at Maples Pavilion and Appel and Hones ... well, they were playing. Appel, the senior All-American and national player of the year candidate, and Hones, a key factor in the Cardinal's Final Four run in 2008, are both coming off knee injuries.

The ice bag on Jayne Appel's left knee is pretty big, as in a pretty big sign that her trip to Italy with the Stanford women's basketball team is going to be a vacation, not a warm-up.

"I'm not ready yet," Appel said Wednesday, as the Cardinal prepared for another practice session leading into Friday's departure to Italy. Stanford is set for an 11-day trip that includes four basketball games, a lot of sightseeing and, in the hopes of coach Tara VanDerveer, the kind of bonding experience that could last her team until next April in San Antonio.

Appel, Stanford's star center, was trying out for USA Basketball's World University team earlier this summer when her left knee began to swell. Appel, who had surgery on that knee a summer ago to repair a torn meniscus, took no chances.

The upheaval at USC and constant defections at UCLA may have sent conference supremacy north.

The NBA draft's early entries have one month to return to school (June 15), but it doesn't appear any of the Pac-10 entries are coming back. Six underclassmen -- USC's DeMar DeRozan and Taj Gibson, UCLA's Jrue Holiday, the Arizona duo of Jordan Hill and Chase Budinger and Arizona State's James Harden -- will participate in the draft combine beginning May 28 in Chicago, and none are likely to return to their schools. Even Holiday, a projected late first-rounder, is reportedly close to hiring an agent and remaining in the draft.

Stanford has ruled the Pac-10 Women's basketball landscape for the past 20 years, and California and Arizona State have recently emerged to make the conference a three-team scramble for supremacy. But two recent hires by Oregon and USC have made it apparent that women's basketball is indeed becoming a higher priority on the West Coast.

On a night when the University of Arizona honored famed coach Lute Olson during halftime, something became very clear as the ceremonial speeches ended and the basketball began. If the Wildcats want to continue their NCAA streak of 25 consecutive tournament appearances, they would need more than an uplifting video (it got dusty in my apartment) and the memory of a coach that has been through a lot the last two years. The Wildcats need a W.

It wasn't happening, as Jerome Randle absolutely murdered the 'Cats in the second half, helping California (22-8, 11-6) improve to third in the Pac-10 with the 83-77 win and put the Wildcats in another uncomfortable position similar to last season -- leaving their March Madness dreams up to chance.