On verge of tying Coach K’s all-time wins record, how Stanford’s Tara VanDerveer changed college basketball

Tara VanDerveer could pass Duke legend Mike Krzyzewski next weekend for the most wins in NCAA basketball history.

STANFORD — The first time they met, Tara VanDerveer and Mike Krzyzewski were sitting on a bench outside the Oval Office, she remembers. Her Stanford team and his Duke team had each won the 1992 National Championship and their players were waiting to meet with George H.W. Bush.

Krzyzewski, whose Blue Devils also had won the previous year, tried explaining to VanDerveer how the day was going to go — the pageantry and picture-taking, speeches and handshakes. He didn’t realize that VanDerveer had already visited the White House in 1990, when she led the Cardinal to its first title in program history.

“I’m like, ‘OK, thanks, but I’ve been here too,’” VanDerveer recalled recently.

Much has changed since that day when the Stanford women removed their high heels to challenge Christian Laettner’s Duke team to a free-throw shooting contest. But Krzyzewski remained on his coast at Duke, and VanDerveer on hers in Palo Alto.

VanDerveer has outlasted Krzyzewski and just about everyone else in a run of unparalleled success. VanDerveer’s coaching career began in 1978 in Moscow, Idaho, but it’s defined by how she built Stanford into the most dominant women’s program on the West Coast, reaching 13 Final Fours. Including her time before arriving at Stanford in 1985, VanDerveer has coached through eight presidential administrations, starting with Jimmy Carter.

At 70 and in her 38th season coaching Stanford, VanDerveer is one victory away from Krzyzewski’s all-time record of 1,202 wins for a college basketball coach. VanDerveer says she isn’t motivated by “some record that’s gonna get broken,” though.

“What’s most important is not the record at all, it’s doing a great job for this team today and tomorrow and each game,” VanDerveer said. “And that 10 years from now, I’m getting Christmas cards from kids I coached and they’ve got families, and they’re sending pictures of their children. Being part of their life in a real positive way. They’ll ask for advice. That’s much more important than the record.”

The record is significant, even if it’s not on VanDerveer’s bulletin board. It’s a record that represents historic success over decades. A record of consistency and evolution, of love for basketball and commitment to mentorship.

“It’s not a women’s achievement, it’s a human achievement,” said Jennifer Azzi, VanDerveer’s first star at Stanford. “I think it makes it super special that now women are having the opportunity to be seen in that light. She’s one of the greatest coaches of all time, period.”

The five-time National Coach of the Year has led Stanford to all three of its national titles — 1990, 1992 and 2021, when she became the only coach ever to win titles 30 years apart. Her first win came at Idaho. Her 100th came at Ohio State. But wins No. 200, 500, 750, and 1,000 have come as a Cardinal.

On Friday, she got No. 1,201. VanDerveer could catch Krzyzewski today at Colorado and pass him Jan. 19 at home against Oregon.

But sustained greatness is only part of her legacy: By only hiring women to her staff, she has grown a sequoia of a coaching tree, influencing much more than 1,203 wins.

Longevity 101: Sustaining success

In 1987, between Azzi’s freshman and sophomore years, the NCAA introduced the 3-point line to the women’s game. In a prescient stroke, VanDerveer committed to the 3-pointer as a weapon, instantly recognizing it as a game-changer.

Stanford has reached the NCAA Tournament every year since then.

Azzi remembers the 1987 team, at VanDerveer’s instruction, locking itself in the gym all summer to learn how to shoot 3s. The players shot hundreds per day.

That season, the Cardinal tried twice as many 3-pointers as the NCAA average, turning in one year from a .500 team to a 27-5 team that reached the Sweet 16. Two seasons later, VanDerveer gave Stanford its first national championship.

“Not only has she won, we were the Steph Curry era before Steph Curry, because we expanded the game,” Azzi said. “I don’t think people realized that she really is the one to take credit for that revolution in the women’s game.”

Year after year, through recruiting cycles and basketball trends, VanDerveer’s teams have contended. Along the way, VanDerveer has adjusted to the 3-point line, the sensibilities of different generations of players, and, more recently, NIL, conference realignment and the transfer portal.

“I think our game has totally changed,” said Lindy La Rocque, who played for Stanford from 2009-12 and later returned as an assistant. “Just the landscape of college sports, right? I think her low-ego approach of always wanting to be a lifelong learner and (doing) what’s best for the team, not ‘what’s my agenda’ — she’s kind of always had that approach. She’s got this curiosity about basketball. You’d think it would fade after 30-plus years, and it hasn’t.”

While some coaches stick to rigid systems, VanDerveer designs styles based on her roster. When Charmin Smith helped Stanford to three straight Final Four berths from 1995 to 1997, Stanford ran a basic inside-out offense. Ten years later, when Smith returned as an assistant, the Cardinal ran the triangle offense — which Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls popularized — around prolific scorer Candice Wiggins.

The triangle, the Princeton offense, pro-style spread pick-and-roll, zone-beating motion offenses — VanDerveer has mastered them all.

Evolving as the game changes has meant more than X’s and O’s, but also relating with each generation that comes through campus. Players from the early 1990s remember the rare occasions that VanDerveer would “break character” to try to crack a joke. Though she’s still serious, VanDerveer shows a softer side more often now.

“I think Tara knows that, over the years, that helps break down some barriers that might be there,” said Katy Steding, a current assistant coach and three-time all-Pac 10 guard for Stanford. “She’s willing to dance. She’s willing to joke. She’s willing to TikTok.”

VanDerveer has coached through the COVID pandemic, the advent of the cell phone, and the rise of social media. To appeal to current players like star Cameron Brink, VanDerveer has invited outside role models — a wellness professional, congressional candidate Julie Lythcott-Haims and a leader from the Graduate School of Business — to speak to the team and provide more holistic experiences in the NIL era.

“I like to help our players get to a place they can’t get to by themselves,” VanDerveer said.

The goal isn’t limited to the hardwood.

‘Her legacy is in all of us’

It was the 2007 offseason for Kate Paye, so she was on a San Diego beach. She’d tried being an attorney, but missed basketball too much, so she found herself in her second stint as a San Diego State assistant coach under Beth Burns — another VanDerveer disciple.

She’ll never forget the phone call. As soon as Paye saw the caller ID, she knew what was about to happen. VanDerveer was offering the Menlo native a chance to come home.

“Inside my head, I just wondered if I could make a difference,” Paye said. “Tara assured me, ‘Absolutely.’ I think Tara’s the first to say that she needs help. She says it all the time. ‘I need help. I need all of you.’”

Paye, who first met VanDerveer as an 11-year-old at her basketball camp and walked on to Stanford in 1991, has been one of VanDerveer’s right-hand women for the past 17 years.

As much as VanDerveer has evolved over the years, her core hasn’t changed. From Azzi and Paye to Wiggins and the Ogwumikes, for 1,201 victories and counting, the message has always been the same: “I have a vision of where you can go, and I’m not going to stop until you get there.” For many, even if they didn’t know it as students, that has meant coaching.

In 38 years at Stanford, VanDerveer has hired only women to her staff. At least 12 of her former players or assistants have gone on to be head coaches, including five currently. As men comprise 41% of head coaching positions in NCAA women’s basketball, VanDerveer’s hiring practices provide a counterbalance.

“Women don’t have the opportunity to coach in college men’s sports,” VanDerveer said. “I think (a mix) would be ideal. But until the men’s side hires women, to give them the opportunity, then I feel like I’ve got to give the opportunity to women. To get the experience of being on the court, learning what to do, then being able to get jobs.”

When VanDerveer first started coaching, she had to volunteer. “I didn’t have any money, I needed to find money for graduate school,” she said. In her leadership position now, she has committed to fielding staffs that look like her players.

At San Francisco, Molly Goodenbour — the point guard on Stanford’s first two national championship teams — emulates VanDerveer’s meticulous, physical, up-tempo, player-centric practices. La Rocque, UNLV’s head coach since 2020, said that next to her parents, VanDerveer has been the most impactful person in her life. Steding, who was VanDerveer’s first signed recruit at Stanford and joined her staff in 2020, had to choke back tears when reflecting on the coach’s influence on her.

VanDerveer’s coaching tree branches beyond the NCAA, too, with proteges in high-ranking posts in the NBA, WNBA and even Nike. Her vision has been realized.

“I think her legacy is in all of us,” Azzi said.

To VanDerveer, that is bigger than any record.