Stanford’s Fran Belibi makes record dunk during NCAA game
Fred Jeter | 3/24/2022, 6 p.m.
Dunking in basketball has become commonplace—for male players, that is.
It’s anything but “ho-hum,” however, when a woman performs the above-rim throw-down.
That’s just what Stanford University’s Francesca Belibi did March 18 in a 78-37 rout of Montana State University in the opening round of the NCAA Women’s Tournament at Stanford.
A 6-foot-1 junior from Colorado, Belibi became just the third woman in NCAA Tournament history to score on a slam dunk. She joined Brittney Griner, who dunked in 2013, and Candace Parker in 2006.
Parker, a star at the University of Tennessee, plays with the WNBA’s Chicago Sky. Griner, a Baylor University standout who plays with the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury and the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg in the offseason, has been arrested and detained since last month by Russian authorities, who claimed an airport search of her luggage turned up hashish oil in her vape cartridges.
Belibi’s teammates for the defending national champions include graduate Anna Wilson from Richmond. Wilson, the sister of NFL quarterback Russell Wilson, averages five points and is among the team’s top defensive players with 45 steals.
