The best stories coming out of Women's Final Four this weekend

As usual, there are plenty of good stories from teams in the Women's NCAA Final Four.

Mississippi State coach Vic Schaefer, a longtime faithful assistant coach who helped other programs (Arkansas, Texas A&M) get to the Final Four, is finally getting his shot at a Final Four as a head coach.

For Schaefer, the cherry on the top is he's making this appearance with his daughter Blair, a junior guard. They are the first father-daughter team in the Final Four together.

"It's really been unique and special," said Schaefer, whose No. 2-seeded team took on top-seeded and undefeated Connecticut in the national semifinals Friday night. "Obviously, she's earned her way. She's been a big contributor throughout her career, but really down the stretch she's had some big minutes for us, made some big shots."

Very nice. But Mississippi State is in the Final Four at the expense of Washington, a team that I wanted to see.

Washington, which lost to Mississippi State in the Sweet 16, featured 5-foot-7 senior guard Kelsey Plum, the new queen of college basketball. Plum became the NCAA's all-time leading scorer this season with 3,527 career points, topping another spunky shooting guard, Jackie Stiles of Missouri State, who graduated in 2001 with 3,393 career points.

This was Plum's most prolific season. She led the country in scoring at 31.7 points per game. Plum broke Stiles' 16-year record on her Senior Night, with a 57-point outburst against Utah. She was a huge attraction, at home and on the road, a smaller (in stature) role model to young players with big dreams.

"One of the greatest parts of her legacy is that there are a lot of kids running around the country who think they can be the next Kelsey Plum," Washington coach Mike Neighbors said. "You don't have to have a physical attribute that screams you're a basketball player, you just need a great work ethic and a hard drive to succeed."

Plum, who this week was named The Associated Press national player of the year, never thought that she would reach such heights.

"If you had told me that all this stuff would have happened to me personally, I would have laughed at you," Plum said. "Not the sense that I didn't believe in myself or anything like that. But it's not something that you think about. I'm the all-time leading scorer in college basketball, and it's something I never dreamed about."

All-American family:

One of the other interesting stories at the Women's Final Four involves the other three head coaches: Geno Auriemma of Connecticut, Tara VanDerveer of Stanford and Dawn Staley of South Carolina.

All three have strong ties to the U.S. women's national basketball team.

VanDerveer coached the team in 1996, one of its most dominating seasons in history. That year, the United States went 52-0 and won the gold medal in Atlanta. The team is credited for being the springboard to launch the WNBA. Staley was a star point guard on that 1996 team.

Auriemma then became the U.S. national coach in 2009 and has guided the team to gold medals in 2012 and 2016.

Coming full circle, Staley was named the U.S. national coach for the next Olympics, the 2020 games in Tokyo.

"Our USA Basketball family is back," Staley said. "We all have made sacrifices for the greater good of our sport. For us all (Staley, Auriemma, VanDerveer) to be here (at the Final Four) says we're doing things the right way.

"We've given so much to the game, and the game in turn has been the greatest gift that keeps on giving. I want to be among greatness. This opportunity does that. I'm extremely happy."

Sister act:

It has been mentioned a lot, but it's so cool that two sisters, Karlie and Katie Lou Samuelson, got to the Final Four in the same year. Karlie is a senior guard at Stanford and Katie Lou is a sophomore forward at Connecticut.

Interestingly, this is not the first time the Samuelson family has had dual representation at the Final Four.

In 2014, when Karlie was a freshman, oldest sister Bonnie was a senior guard at Stanford when the Cardinal made a Final Four appearance.

pbabcock@dailyherald.com

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