North Carolina State University Athletics
Stansbury Makes Pack Debut Tonight
11/19/2004 12:00:00 AM | Women's Basketball
Nov. 19, 2004
BY TIM PEELER
Tiffany Stansbury didn't know she liked basketball, really, until she spent a year in France watching her dad play.
Until then, the daughter of two former Temple athletes had followed her mother's path in running track most of her early years in Philadelphia. Her mom, Ingrid Campbell, ran track for the Owls in the mid-70s, at the same time her dad, Terence Stansbury, was a standout basketball player. But even when Tiffany got to Paris following her seventh grade year, her dad didn't push her to play the sport he was playing professionally.
"I think he was afraid I would get hurt or something," Stansbury said.
But while running track at a bi-lingual school in Paris, Stansbury decided she really didn't like that sport all that much. By then, she was getting taller, and when she returned to private school in Philadelphia, her new classmates were so eager for her to go out for the school's basketball team, they offered to pay her.
(At this point of the story, Wolfpack coach Kay Yow interjects: "Remember, they just offered to pay her. She didn't accept anything.")
So it's been seven years now, and Stansbury is still standing. Tonight, she makes her Division I debut when Yow's 30th edition of the Wolfpack open its season against UNC-Wilmington at Reynolds Coliseum. Last year, after a big mid-season turnaround, Yow's team went 17-15 and earned the school's 17th NCAA Tournament bid.
Stansbury, a 6-foot-3 native of Philadelphia, made a circuitous trip to get to Raleigh. She spent four years playing high school basketball at Riverdale Baptist School in Upper Marlboro, Md., where she was twice named her team's Most Valuable Player and named All-Metro by the Washington Post.
Though she was recruited by N.C. State in high school, and she desperately wanted to come play for Yow, Stansbury spent her first two years in college at Gulf Coast Community College in Panama City, Fla. There, she twice led her team to the National Junior College Athletic Association championship game. Gulf Coast won the national title her sophomore year, with Stansbury averaging 13.9 points and 11.2 rebounds per game.
Now, Stansbury has the difficult task of replacing All-ACC performer Kaayla Chones, who was a second-round pick in the WNBA after she completed her all-star career with the Wolfpack. But Stansbury is a different player. A talented athlete, she can get up and down the floor. She has excellent offensive skills. But she is also a strong rebounder, which is something that Yow needs this year with the loss of Chones and Alvine Mendeng.
Yow and her staff think they have really found an unpolished diamond in Stansbury, who was recruited by more Southeast Conference schools and not many ACC schools. First-year assistant Trena Trice-Hill believes Stansbury has the talent to play in the WNBA, where Trice-Hill spent two of her 14 years of professional basketball.
"She runs the floor like a guard," said assistant coach Stephanie Glance. "She has great hands. She is a tremendous offensive rebounder. Not many people are great offensive rebounders. She is going to get to the rim a lot.
"I think what is going to be Tiffany's challenge is the physical nature of the game at this level."
Stansbury and freshman Khadijah Whittington, a 6-foot-1 forward from Roanoke, Va., have made a favorable impression on their new coach and are two of the reasons Yow thinks most people have underestimated her team going into the season.
This weekend will be an important test for the Wolfpack, with tonight's game against the Seahawks and Sunday's game in the Jimmy V Women's Classic against Tennessee at the RBC Center. With a relatively inexperienced team, Yow knows that what she sees this weekend might not be the same team she has in a few weeks. But she thinks the Wolfpack is talented enough that when ACC play begins in January that it can be a contender.
Stansbury will play a huge role in that, since she will likely be the centerpiece of the Wolfpack's four-out, one-in offense.
"I am not sure exactly where she is going to be this first week," Yow said. ""She has to get comfortable in the system, comfortable at this level of competition game-in and game-out. But I think Tiffany, in a couple of weeks, is going to be a major force for this basketball team."
"I think Khadijah Whittington is going to be a force for this team, too. I think in another month or so, I would anticipate that they both might be starting inside."
Stansbury is anxious to get started on her N.C. State career, even though she admits she isn't yet playing up to her potential. She sees the two games this weekend as an opportunity to get a gauge on exactly where she needs to improve.
"We need to kind of know where we stand," Stansbury said. "Right now, I am playing OK, I think, but now that it is game time, I need to step it up."
She will have the added motivation of playing in front of her mother and younger sister, Amber Beckford. Her dad, however, won't be here. He's the head coach of a professional team in the Netherlands.
"It's the first time my mom will have a chance to see me play on this level,'' Stansbury said. ""She came when we played in the nationals last year, which was the first time she had seen me play since before I went to junior college.''
Now, her mom and Wolfpack fans hope to see Stansbury excel at college basketball's highest level.
You may contact Tim Peeler at tim_peeler@ncsu.edu.
