STANFORD, Calif. -- Several banners hang from the rafters of Maples Pavilion on the Stanford campus proclaiming the excellence of the women's basketball program.

	Lindsey Yamasaki and her fellow seniors want to make one last statement before they graduate.

Two celebrate NCAA championship teams of 1990 and 1992. Another lists the 15 NCAA appearances, the last 14 in succession.

It has been five years, though, since Stanford has reached the Final Four, gone undefeated in the Pac-10 and been ranked as high as No. 3 in the nation.

This season has brought some progress. The Cardinal (21-1 overall, 11-0 Pac-10 heading into Saturday's game with Cal) have been ranked third for two weeks, are unbeaten in conference play and are among the favorites to reach the Final Four in San Antonio.

"In some ways we were a victim of our own success," said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, who has won nearly 79 percent of the games she has coached at Stanford. "We went to six Final Fours in the '90s and while I wouldn't say people started taking it for granted, they did get excited about it."

So much so, that when Stanford failed to get past the second round of the NCAA Tournament the past four years, people wondered what was wrong. The Cardinal are 2-5 in their last seven tournament games. They were 34-7 in their previous 41 NCAA games in the VanDerveer era.

A senior class in 1998 that included Kristin Folkl, Olympia Scott, Heather Owen, Vanessa Nygaard and Naomi Mulitauaopele -- all of whom have played or are playing in the WNBA -- proved to be the most successful in school history and set nearly impossible-to-reach standards. They were 70-2 in conference play, 115-14 overall, played in three Final Fours, and were never ranked lower than fifth.

The class of 1997 included future pros Kate Starbird, Charmin Smith and Jamila Wideman.

"The hard thing was not so much losing them, but when they were freshmen and sophomores, it was hard to recruit behind them," said VanDerveer. "People wondered where they were going to play. Kids didn't want to sit two years. We were hurt because we were so stacked and so young."

Stanford, ranked fifth, entered the 1998 NCAA Tournament as a No. 1 seed, but lost Folkl and Nygaard to injuries and were upset by Harvard, 71-67, in the first round.

	Nicole Powell has helped power Stanford back among the elite.

The next year, with a young team, Stanford opened the season with six consecutive nationally ranked opponents and seven in its first 10 games. The Cardinal were 4-7 at one point en route to an 18-12 finish, the worst since VanDerveer's second year at Stanford in 1986-87.

"Those two huge injuries hurt in a lot of ways," VanDerveer said. "Instead of finishing strong, it was painful to watch the team's hopes go down so quickly. It forced people to play who were not ready and that hurt our confidence and set us back. Then we really overscheduled the next year with so many top-10 teams. We were never able to gain any confidence with a young team."

Lindsey Yamasaki and Bethany Donaphin, now seniors, were freshmen starters that next season, and both are helping pave the way back to national prominence. Yamasaki led Stanford in scoring (14.0) as a freshman.

Lauren St. Clair, Enjoli Izidor and Cori Enghusen -- also seniors -- saw significant playing time in 1998-99 as the Cardinal went 4-6 against ranked opponents, which included eventual national champion Purdue's only loss of the year.

But it wasn't supposed to take so long to get back to the top.

The Cardinal never made it above No. 14 the past three years. Yamasaki played volleyball in her sophomore year, then struggled with a knee injury. Jamie Carey, the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year in 2000, retired after one year because of recurring concussions. Susan King has had her first two seasons end prematurely with ACL injuries.

Last year's team still managed to tie for the Pac-10 championship despite losing both Carey and King.

"It's scary to think how good we could have been with those two kids," said VanDerveer. "If we didn't have the injuries, it wouldn't have been a rebuilding period."

The key addition has been sophomore Nicole Powell, almost certainly an All-American. She became the first freshman to lead the Pac-10 in rebounding last year and spent most of the year as the team's point guard.

This year, she's back playing a number of positions as two highly regarded recruiting classes have swelled the talent pool and given the Cardinal their deepest team since the mid-1990s.

Powell has recorded a pair of triple-doubles this season and missed a third by one assist. She set the school's single-game rebounding mark of 21 and averages a double-double.

"The seniors feel a sense of urgency this season and they want to make a statement about their stay at Stanford," VanDerveer said. "But I don't know where we'd be without the freshmen and Powell."

Freshmen Kelley Suminski and T'Nae Thiel have moved into the starting lineup along with Powell, Donaphin and Yamasaki. Freshman Sebnem Kimyacioglu also has started a handful of games.

Three players -- including King -- were injured this season but a bench full of experienced talent has helped.

And then there's Powell, who usually plays a guard on offense, then switches to a post position on defense to utilize her rebounding skills.

"She's a Magic Johnson type," VanDerveer said. "She does whatever needs to be done on the court. I don't want to wear her down, but she loves to play and she's extremely unselfish. There's really no limits on her and she's willing to work."