USA Basketball 97, Stanford 62
If US national team coach Anne Donovan -- or more likely, assistant Mike Thibault -- were in a joking mood at the press conference Thursday, s/he might've said, "with five minutes left in the first half, that Appel kid pulled them within three points, and we were on a 3-for-13 shooting stretch. So I told them to stop missing." From there, the Nationals shot 29-for-43, and beat Stanford 97-62.
The boxscore said that Sue Bird missed twice, but I don't recall the misses. Bird was 7-for-9, leading all scorers with 19 smooth points in 21 minutes. She rattled the rim once after a backcourt turnover followed by 3-on-2 break, and gave a sheepish look.
You could say "Diana Taurasi is the slickest passer in basketball", and someone could argue "She's not even the slickest passer on her home floor", and ... now that I'm thinking about it, I'd love to watch the Phoenix Mercury's Taurasi and Phoenix Sun Steve Nash play together. Taurasi's highlight reel moment came early in the first half. Candice Wiggins hit a trey, but the Nationals beat Stanford in transition. Taurasi, handling the ball at the left halfline, found Seimone Augustus streaking toward the right hashmarks, and hit her with a 40-foot bounce pass that she had to *wrap around* a defender at the top of the circle.
As Detroit Shock manager Bill Laimbeer tries to pawn Kara Braxton during this offseason, he'll be showing people tape of this exhibition. Braxton was phenomenal in the post, demonstrating every free-up move she had against Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen, and Morgan Clyburn, and scoring seven layups in 15 minutes. But Bill will have to perform some careful editing, and delete Braxton's pass from the middle of the paint into the seats behind the right sideline, and also the rim-to-rim sequence where Appel blocked Braxton under one rim, and then after eight other players were back in transition, Appel ran through traffic to catch and layup while Braxton was, um, trailing.
I'd love to say that Appel outplayed Lisa Leslie, who shot 1-for-5, but Leslie just had a peculiar bad game. Perhaps she was undone by the applause she received from the Stanford crowd, which included an entire section of Sacramento Monarchs fans. Monarchs fans are usually relentless in their hounding of Leslie, but perhaps LaLisa built up a bit of good karma Thursday for not once doing that hug-myself-for-being-so-fabulous.
The Monarchs fan section cheered for Kara Lawson when Lawson took the ball out of bounds. Those people are crazy. I didn't make a peep when Jamie Carey, after whom I named a hard drive, dropped two consecutive three-pointers at 10:34 and 10:13 of the second half. Not a peep, I tell you.
I met Lindsay Amstutz, the WNBA's director of business development for Chicago, Connecticut, Los Angeles, and Washington. I did not beg for a job. But I actually need one, because I got laid off three hours before game time.