Tara VanDerveer’s trail to becoming college basketball’s winningest coach

Tara VanDerveer now stands alone. But for how long? We’ll get back to that in a second.

Stanford’s 65-56 win over Oregon State Sunday was not just any ol’ victory, but No. 1,203 for VanDerveer. No college basketball coach, male or female, has won more, with Mike Krzyzewski the last giant to pass, and that was done Sunday.

Time, then, for Tara Trivia.

• Go back to the early 1970s — Indiana University men’s basketball practice, Bob Knight in charge. See the young lady sitting in the stands, taking notes? That’s a student from Knight’s coaching class. He has told the class members they are free to attend practice and she’s the one who shows up nearly every day to watch and learn and dream. Tara VanDerveer.
• She played guard for Indiana. This was the dark ages in women’s athletics. The team members had to buy their own shoes and wash their own laundry. None of that discouraged someone in love with a game, for life as it turned out.
• Legend has it her first name came from the Tara Mansion in Gone With The Wind. There is some question if that is actual fact, but why quibble when you’re linked to a movie that, adjusted for inflation, has grossed $4 billion?
• Her first career win was Dec. 1, 1978, when Idaho slipped by Northern Montana 70-68. She once talked about how she had to pull out the bleachers herself to get the gym ready for the game, and how her debut went down to the final seconds. “There was a timeout and I remember telling our team, ‘All right, just play great defense, don’t foul.’ And of course, we fouled. I said to myself, ‘This is going to be harder than it looks.'”
• She was head coach at Idaho and Ohio State before moving to Stanford in 1985. Her father warned her not to take the Stanford offer because it seemed a dead-end job. The Cardinal were 9-19 the year before she arrived, and crowds were sparse, maybe reaching triple figures on a good night. In three seasons, she had Stanford 27-5 and in the Sweet 16. The Cardinal average attendance last season was more than 4,000.
• Stanford and VanDerveer missed the NCAA tournament in 1987. But none of the 35 tournaments since.
• Her first national championship came in 1990. Her second came in 1992. Her most recent came 29 years later in 2021. That gap — and the extraordinary ability to adapt and survive that it suggested — was unprecedented in Division I sports.

• She has personally coached more than 85 percent of the victories in the history of the Stanford women’s program.
• She took a year off from Stanford to coach the USA national team in 1996. That journey ended with a gold medal in the Atlanta Olympics. Counting all the lead-up games preparing for the Olympics, her team went 60-0.
• Worn out from her foot-to-the-floor work style and seriously considering retirement in 2015, VanDerveer instead listened to a friend’s advice and took the summer off from basketball, escaping to her cabin in Minnesota. Rather than grind away at recruiting and film watching, she skied and kayaked and gazed at the quiet lake. Nine years later, she’s still coaching and winning.
• She has piled up more victories by herself than 355 of the 360 Division I women’s programs.
• Fifteen of her Stanford players have become first team All-Americans a total of 36 times. Thirty have appeared in a game in the WNBA.
• Along with her 1,203 career wins are 267 defeats. The most infamous was 1998 when Stanford became the first No. 1 seed to lose to a No. 16 seed in the NCAA tournament, two decades before the same thing happened to the Virginia men. The 71-67 loss to Harvard must come with a footnote; Stanford lost two top players to ACL injuries leading up to the game. “It was kind of a perfect storm,” she once said of that day. “They were a 16 that really wasn’t a 16 and we were a 1 that really wasn’t a 1.” At last check, she has never watched a tape of the game.
• VanDerveer’s Stanford program has been the pride of Pac-12 women’s basketball and she deeply feels about the imminent breakup of the league. “It’s heartbreaking,” she said before this season. “This has been my whole life. I woke up when I heard about it, I said I’m in a bad dream. This is a nightmare.”
• By all accounts, she plays a mean piano. Also bridge. After her record-setting victory Sunday, she had to text her 96-year-old mother to cancel their bridge game. The post-1,203 hullabaloo would take too long.
• Finally, about that idea of now standing alone at the top of the all-time victory chart. Yes, she does, but there is a rather large figure in her rear-view mirror.

On Nov. 22, 1985, Stanford defeated Hawaii 68-65 in the first game for its new coach. Her name was Tara VanDerveer. The next day, Connecticut beat Iona 73-67 in the first game for its new coach. His name was Geno Auriemma. They both arrived at nearly the same instant at the places where they would make their legends. Dynasties under speedy construction, a continent apart. Both had much work to do. Stanford was 9-19 the year before VanDerveer, UConn was 9-18 the season before Auriemma. Both would have losing records their first season.

But more than 38 years later, each is still at the same post, with Hall of Fame auras. And while VanDerveer just passed Krzyzewski, he was a stationary target. UConn won over the weekend, too, and that was No. 1,196 for Auriemma. He’s only seven victories behind. The race to be the all-time wins leader will likely be decided by whomever decides to retire first.

For the record, VanDerveer is 70, born nine months before Auriemma.

Also, for the record, they have played 19 times and Auriemma has a 12-7 edge. Both teams have been ranked in the top-10 in their last 14 meetings, and four times it was No. 1 vs. No. 2. The most recent game was the Huskies’ 63-58 win in the 2022 Final Four. The day before, VanDerveer said of their relationship, “I’ve never felt that we were adversaries in a negative way, but more competitors in a very good way.”

Looks like it may be like that to the end. But this weekend, it was Tara VanDerveer’s moment and Tara VanDerveer’s record.