How Stanford’s Jump became more than a jumpshooter

STANFORD — With a seven-point lead and only a minute to play, Stanford was just looking to break Tennessee’s press and kill the clock.

But when Hannah Jump got the ball, wide open in the corner in front of the Stanford bench, it didn’t matter that 20 seconds remained on the shot clock.

When Jump is wide open from 3-point range, she doesn’t think – she just does what she does best. And she knows Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer is good with that, too.

“Hannah Jump has the ‘as-green-as-it-gets’ light,” VanDerveer said after the game. “There were some other people taking shots I didn’t like, but not Hannah.”

Heading into Monday’s showdown with No. 18 Arizona — a rematch of the 2021 national championship game — the 6-foot senior is the nation’s top 3-point shooter. Jump’s 6-for-10 showing from beyond the arc in Stanford’s win over Arizona State on Saturday brought her to 51 made 3-pointers on the season, more than every other player in the country, and she’s also in the top 10 in percentage, at 50%.

Born in England but raised in the Bay Area, Jump spent a lot of her youth competing against Haley Jones, now her teammate at Stanford. Jones still has a vivid memory of one of their early meetings as middle-schoolers on opposing club teams.

“She was giving us straight-up buckets,”Jones said. “She was getting busy and nobody could guard her. I thought she was, like, four years older than me. She was so good.”

Jump and Jones would keep facing off all throughout high school, with Jump starring at Pinewood in Los Altos while Jones went on to be the nation’s No. 1 recruit out of Archbishop Mitty. It was at Pinewood where Jump learned under legendary shooting coach Doc Scheppler and had her shooting ability blossom.

“I brag about her in terms of her shooting numbers in our drills and competitions,” Scheppler said, adding that Jump once made 35-of-36 3-pointers in a two-minute drill and once hit 49 3-pointers in a three-minute drill.

On the court, Jones’ Monarchs won the Central Coast Section’s top championship over Jump’s Panthers every year they faced off. But when competing in the state-wide tournament after the section playoffs, Pinewood won back-to-back NorCal titles each time, including beating Mitty in the 2018 NorCal championship game.

But the rivals also were friends and teammates on the Cal Stars elite club basketball team in the East Bay. And when it came time to head to college, both stayed close to their homes and their hearts to play at Stanford.

While Jones instantly stepped into a starring role, VanDerveer saw Jump fitting as a game-changing offensive spark off the bench. She hit eight 3-pointers in her sixth collegiate game, scoring 24 points against a ranked Syracuse team to help lead Stanford to a win.

But there was one area of the collegiate game Scheppler knew she’d struggle with: Physicality.  VanDerveer saw it right away — and Jump’s playing time became very inconsistent.

“When she would get in the game, they picked on her. They went right at her. I mean, sometimes she had to come out in two minutes,” VanDerveer said. “But her competitiveness — she’s always been a team player, but I think she realized that she wants to contribute at both ends.”

Jump agreed and knew she needed to improve on her defense entering last offseason. But what she decided to do was try out an entirely different style of basketball: 3-on-3.

It’s the formal version of schoolyard 3-on-3 with the pace of the pros. Played on a half-court, the ball only needs to clear the 3-point line to change from defense to offense. Baskets inside the 3-point line count as 1 point and beyond the line count as 2 points. Games are played on a rolling 10-minute clock but can end before that if one team scores 21 points.

Jump suited up for England in 3-on-3 at the 2022 Commonwealth Games in Birmingham, about 75 miles south of her birthplace of Warrington. Even against older competition, she starred, finishing second in the tournament in points per game (7) and helping England win a silver medal. She had a blast doing it, too.

“I fell in love with the game of 3-on-3,” Jump said. “Being a shooter, it’s a dream world of basketball. The ball was in my hands a lot, so I had to learn to make really quick decisions … I learned a lot about the physicality of the game but also just kind of learned to slow the game down and make really good reads.”

To VanDerveer, it was Jump’s defense that grew the most in 3-on-3 and made her into “a different player.

“I think her playing in the 3-on-3 helped her a lot because she is a much more confident defender,” VanDerveer said of Jump. “Everyone knows she can shoot and she’s got a fabulous shot. But she’s a lot more than that.”

Jump agreed: “I really think that 3-on-3 helped my defense. You’re basically playing 1-on-1 defense, you can’t have much help in 3-on-3. … The quick transition, if you miss a shot, you can’t think about it because you’re immediately on defense and you just have to flip that switch.”

And now, VanDerveer has no hesitation about keeping Jump on the floor, even admitting: “I don’t want to take her off the floor — I have to, but it’s hard because she’s so valuable.” She played all 40 minutes in that aforementioned game against Tennessee.

“I think what Hannah has done is inspirational,” VanDerveer said. “She basically transformed her body from high school to college. She is thick and she is strong. She’s a great teammate, she’s a leader by example. She practices hard. It’s a really exciting story.”

After growing up going to Stanford summer camps and dreaming of playing for VanDerveer, Jump has pushed any self doubt out of her mind and embraced the opportunity.

“It’s always been like a dream and a goal of mine to play here, so to be able to be in my senior year and be starting right now, it feels incredible,” Jump said. “I put in a lot of hard work to get here, a lot of belief and doubling down on myself, knowing that I can and that I belong here. I think that’s been like the biggest thing, it’s been kind of like the mental switch of it.”

Jump could play another season at Stanford, using the free year of eligibility every college athlete got from the coronavirus-impacted 2020-21 season.

If she decides to pursue a professional career, she could first focus her efforts on the 3-on-3 game and try to help Great Britain qualify for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. Or she could try to make it in the WNBA, where her shooting ability would presumably be welcomed.

“The reason Hannah can play in the WNBA is because the value of having a shooter is now common knowledge,” Scheppler said. “She’s a floor spacer, and she’s worth 20 points a game whether she scores them (herself) or not.”

Jones, who will almost certainly be a top-four pick in April’s WNBA Draft, added, “I think Hannah’s one of the best shooters in the country, so why would you not see her playing pro somewhere? There’s always going to be a place on a team if you can shoot like that.”

Jump’s value in the cutthroat world of the WNBA — which employs only about 135 players, which is almost a quarter of the spots available in the NBA — will be up for some debate. Ahead of a Stanford game this year, one WNBA executive at Maples Pavilion said of Jump, “What translates to the pro level? She’s got to be able to do more than [shooting]. Specialists are no longer in our league.”

But so far this season, Jump is showing that she’s not just a specialist. And all the work that she put in to get to this point is leaving a major impression on the coach she grew up wanting to play for.

“I wish everyone would get the Hannah Jump formula,” VanDerveer said, “because it’s just special.”