Do you believe in love at first sight?  Or that nice guys finish last?  How about Unicorns?  The answers to these questions are all arbitrary; it really depends on who you ask.   Here's a question to which I think we'd all come up with a similar answer: Do you believe in home court advantage? I'd be inclined to say yes. How else do you explain beating a team by 20 on your home court and then going over to their gym and playing a tight two-point game? Some people point to refs (we never do that), others point to the crowd, and many believe familiarity with the court and rims help the home team. Regardless of the actual reasons, road trips have tripped up many teams...including ours.  So far your Stanford Cardinal is 5-0 at home, 2-0 at neutral sites, and 4-3 on the road. Post-Duke loss and pre-South Carolina win, Jayne Appel delivered our pre-game "lets go- come out swinging- here we go Card" rally speech. She looked each one of us in the eye and said, "we have something to prove... we MUST be Road Warriors."

Despite the inspiration, we didn't prove much of anything and proceeded to finish up our long road trip against 3 good teams with a 1-2 record. We did end up beating South Carolina that day, but we lost to Duke and then to Tennessee in OT.

Free throws, rebounding and press breaking are all things we work on every single day in practice against each other and against the male practice players. I'm not so worried about those things. We are more than capable of knocking down a free throw, boxing out, and bringing the ball up the court. 

Last season, we had one maxim: "Tough and together".  We said it everyday together in the team huddle before and after practice.  But leaving Tennessee for our four-day holiday break, the unsaid question was: are we tough and together this season?  

Tough teams win on the road.

On December 26, we returned from our respective states, from our family and friends, from people who don't care if we turn over the ball or take low-percentage shots. Many of us returned from the break with gifts, some came back with new hairstyles: new braids, new weaves and fresh highlights. Fresh off the plane, we returned from the warmth of our homes to a freezing Maples Pavilion. Any previously sore knees, shoulders, hamstrings and ankles ached as we fought to warm up. We were about to start the Pac-10 season and fittingly we started the season off with a tough challenge. We were going on the road again to play a very tough team, Arizona State.

We were down at halftime. We jogged into the locker room and awaited our halftime speech from the coaches. What we received instead was a very emotional inquiry form assistant coach Bobbie Kelsey, "Who wants it"? Silence. "I am up to here with y'all not playing the way I know you can. You are better than this! Go out there play hard, COME ON!" Silence. And then Jillian Harmon, the only true senior on our team said, "Lets go!"  And then we all rallied; everyone said something. Even the people who don't talk much on our team said something. And then Tara brought us into a huddle. And then we warmed up for the second half slapping each other's backs, looking each other in the eye and just saying things to make sure we were talking and being vocal. The second half started. Jillian stepped up and put the team on her back and everyone else played with passion and did what they had to do. And we came back and won.

You know, I've been around long enough to know the team you see in December is usually not the team you see in March. There are so many unforeseen moments that define a team. I've learned rankings don't mean as much as getting on a roll at the right time does. I've learned that getting to where we went last year took everyone.  We will need everyone. I'm proud of what our team did in Arizona.  So far we are 2-0 in the Pac 10. Two-and-oh on the road. New Season, new mentality. We are tough and together, we are road warriors.

I hope you enjoyed getting to know more about our team in this week's edition of the "Rhetoric of RosGO."  Come back soon to learn more about what goes on behind the scenes!