For the first time in decades, Stanford women's basketball is unranked to start season

Things are looking a little different on The Farm this season.

Mar 31, 2022; Minneapolis, MN, USA; Stanford Cardinal guard Lacie Hall (24) shoots the ball under supervison of assistant coach Kate Paye during NCAA women's Final Four practice at Target Center. Mandatory Credit: Kirby Lee-Imagn Images / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

Oh, how times have really changed. For years, the Stanford women’s basketball program has been one of the nation’s best, not only being consistently ranked in the AP Top 25, but more often than not being inside the top 10. But in what has been a year of constant change, with legendary head coach Tara VanDerveer retiring and the program being in a new conference, the preseason polls have not been kind to the Cardinal, with the team going into a season unranked for the first time in 25 years.

Led by longtime assistant and new head coach Kate Paye, Stanford is projected to finish in seventh in the ACC, according to the ACC preseason media polls while also not being anywhere in the Top 25. This comes after the Cardinal won the Pac-12 regular season and were runners-up in the Pac-12 tournament, also making it all the way to the Sweet Sixteen where despite falling to NC State, Stanford finished the year with a 30-6 record and were ranked No. 9 in the final AP poll of the season.

In addition to Paye taking over for VanDerveer, Stanford’s low AP ranking can be attributed to the losses of WNBA draft pick Cameron Brink and last season’s points per game leader, Kiki Iriafen, who transferred to USC. Hannah Jump also graduated after putting up double digit points last season as well.

However, Stanford did manage to snag a couple of key transfers from the portal, with sophomore Mary Ashley Stevenson coming from Purdue and junior Tess Heal coming from Santa Clara. Both of them expect to provide experience and immense talent to a team that retains seniors Brooke Demetre and Elena Bosgana. Other notable additions include freshman forward Kennedy Umeh, a four-star prospect out of Columbia, Maryland.

VanDerveer, the winningest coach in college basketball history and a three-time national champion, built Stanford from the ground up and turned a program that was coming off of a 5-23 season in 1985 to a national powerhouse for decades. With Paye now in her role, keeping the standards and the culture the same while also adapting to all the changes will be a top priority of the Cardinal this year.