Haley Jones’ commitment to Stanford a moment years in the making

How today’s success for a college programs plants the seeds for tomorrow’s recruiting.

There are many big takeaways one should have from top 2019 recruit Haley Jones’ decision to go to Stanford.

Our Carly Grenfell’s look at how this helps the parity of this sport is correct, while there’s definitely some things to think about Connecticut’s 2019 recruiting misses, as Grenfell touched on and Dan Olson broke down thoroughly for ESPNW.

But to me, there’s a main point to hammer home for schools: succeeding at the highest levels can bear fruit for years and years.

In fact, it’s been 10 years since Nneka Ogwumike played her first game on the Farm, joining a Stanford team that had reached the national championship but lost to Candace Parker’s final team at Tennessee the prior season.

More from NCAA

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• Your Day in Women’s Basketball, March 26: Louisville and Texas A&M survive and advance
• Your Day in Women’s Basketball, March 23: Highlights from the first round of the NCAA Tournament
• Your Day in Women’s Basketball, March 16: Tournament bracket released

Nneka went a perfect 4-for-4 in reaching the Final Four during her years at Stanford, including getting back to the title game in 2010 but falling to Connecticut. The final two trips to the Final Four overlapped with her sister Chiney, who added one more during her senior year in 2014. Both were (and still are) uber-athletic power forwards who each were AP 1st Team All-Americans once during their time in Palo Alto.

Though they never won the national championship, Tara VanDerveer’s teams went to six Final Fours and two national championship games in seven years during this stretch, never winning fewer than 33 games in a season.

Growing up in Santa Cruz, just an hour away from Stanford, Jones was seven years old when Nneka arrived on campus and was 13 when Chiney played her final game for Stanford. You don’t think Jones — who is now a 6-foot-1 forward — took more than a few notes in watching the Ogwumike sisters?

Or maybe even got some tips from the Ogwumike sisters themselves? ESPNW shared a photo of a fifth-grade Haley Jones and VanDerveer from a basketball camp at Stanford. The Archbishop Mitty star attended multiple camps in Palo Alto growing up, leading local conjecture to believe she was always destined for Stanford. One of her closest friends is fellow 2019 Stanford signee Hannah Jump — her teammate on the club team circuit, her rival in the school year.

The Jones signing will put Stanford firmly in the Top 5 in every recruiting ranking for the 2019 class, something that people wondered if VanDerveer could pull off again. In fact, as the Hall of Fame coach nears 900 wins at Stanford in her career, there’s been persistent questions as to when VanDerveer will hang it up.

Longtime reporter Michelle Smith hinted at this on Twitter Wednesday, and I’d want to add that longtime Stanford assistant Kate Paye is extremely well-respected and has been assumed to be the successor to VanDerveer for a while now. As Smith hinted at, could VanDerveer coach this group as freshmen for a year, finish out her current contract then take a “coach emeritus” position to allow Paye to take charge?

But even if that happens, VanDerveer’s impact on the program will continue to be felt for years after the fact, as Jones’ commitment can help show. And it has me thinking about other recent teams that have shot up into perennial powerhouses throughout the country.

How many little girls in Columbia, South Carolina just saw what A’ja Wilson did and said to themselves, “I want to be like her?”Or what about the back-to-back Final Four runs in Starkville, Mississippi? Or how about with the current group of start in Eugene, Oregon right now? Or in Louisville, Kentucky? (And I know all about you too, Storrs.)

Of course, there’s an insane amount of luck that must happen at each step of the way during that process: getting the players into your school that can make the Final Four run, actually making said run, keeping the success level that high, and many more before even getting to the recruiting stage.

But when the stars align, special things can happen. And you have to believe that the feeling around Stanford is that special things are in store for the near future.