Check out Cardinal star
Great basketball player? Check.
Great teammate? Check.
Great student? Check.
Great person? Check.
Candice Wiggins has it all.
The Stanford senior, the all-time leading scorer in Pac-10 history, is described by her coach and teammates as talented, competitive, intelligent, humble and fun.
What more could there be?
It takes time, but eventually the word leaks out – Candice Wiggins is a thief.
“She stole my squirt gun,” sophomore Jane Appel said.
Please elaborate.
“We got Easter baskets and she took my squirt gun,” Appel said. “I think she was afraid what I’d do with it.”
Drats.
Forgot focused leader. Better check that off, too.
So how good is this lady who inspires opponents to speak as highly of her as teammates or head coach Tara VanDerveer, who said, “She’s a real special human being…. She’s a joy to be with every day.”
Try 2,535 points and counting, with the school record for career average (19.1), and a 129-19 record in her four years at Stanford heading into the Cardinal’s Sweet 16 game of the NCAA tournament.
But for all of her feats, the daughter of former major league baseball player Alan Wiggins has never escaped a regional and appeared in a Final Four.
“You always feel different in the NCAA tournament, but being a senior is different,” Cardinal senior Cissy Pierce said. “If you’re not a senior and you lose in the NCAA, there’s always next year. For seniors, our next loss is our last one. There’s no next year. You can see that sense of urgency every time she plays.”
It was evident when Wiggins tied the school record with 44 points in a 34-point win over UTEP at the Cardinal’s Maple Pavilion on Monday.
That game was important because after reaching the Elite Eight her first two seasons, Stanford lost in the second round last season at home.
“She’s obviously a star … she almost had a triple-double,” Pierce said. “A lot of people can go out and just have 44 points. When you rebound, throw assists, get steals, that’s just playing the total game.”
“It was cool,” Wiggins said. “It was my last game at Maples. I just wanted it to be special.”
And Tuesday was just another day.
“One of the best things about Candice, you could give her eight gold medals and she’d still be the same Candice,” Appel said. “I feel lucky to be able to say I played half my career with her.”
Told that Agnus Berenato, coach of Pittsburgh, said she was “all that and a box of chocolates,” Wiggins was flattered, again.
“I don’t get tired of it,” she said. “When I hear a compliment, it means a lot to me. I do appreciate when people have good things to say. It really means a lot.”
She has the same reaction when the subject is her father, who died from AIDS when she was 3 because of drug abuse.
“People have genuine interest,” she said. “People send a lot of stuff, talk about an experience they had. … It’s good because you hear a lot of negative stories. Hearing the positive stories, you get both sides of things.
“My mom and brother and sister can give me more, but having people talk about him means a lot. It was really harder as a freshman. I wasn’t used to having the attention because of my dad and I never watched him play. I didn’t know the success of the Padres in the ‘80s. It was like talking about a stranger.”
But now the Cardinal are focused on the task at hand, making sure there is a tomorrow for the player who led them to where they are today.
“She’s just so genuinely happy when other people do well that I feel like you want to do well for her,” sophomore JJ Hones said. “I definitely feel like being here in the Sweet 16 and then, hopefully, getting to where we want to get, would be a great tribute to both Candice and Cissy.”