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STANFORD, Calif. -- Even in November, Tara VanDerveer prepares her team for March by scheduling tough games and treating them like NCAA Tournament matchups.Crisp ball movement and balance carried Stanford.Brittany McPhee scored a career-high 28 points, Erica McCall added 17 points and six blocked shots, and No. 11 Stanford avenged a home loss against Texas from two years ago by beating the eighth-ranked Longhorns 71-59 on Monday night.McPhee shot 11 for 15 and had seven rebounds, while McCall had five boards and blocked five of her shots in the first half as Stanford (2-0) shot 54.9 percent to overcome 20 turnovers and spoil Texas season opener.Our team really focused. This was like an NCAA Tournament week. It was awesome, VanDerveer said. Im really proud of how people worked and Im really excited for the good things that we did and well go right back to work and get ready for Gonzaga and clean up some of those rebounds, some of those turnovers.VanDerveer, the Hall of Fame coach beginning her 31st season at the school and 38th as a college coach, moved 18 victories away from joining the late Pat Summitt as the only womens coaches to reach 1,000 career wins.After the Longhorns cut Stanfords lead to 52-47 on Joyner Holmes layin with 3:10 left in the third quarter, McCall quickly answered on the other end and Alanna Smith scored the next time down as the Cardinal capitalized on Atkins turnover.Smith, a sophomore from Australia, had her family in the stands visiting. Her father, Darren, was asked during one timeout what insight he had for the team -- and his response was a good one.Get Brittany McPhee the ball, he said, smiling.Brooke McCarty, the leading returning scorer for Texas after she averaged 11.8 points last season, had 20 points and Ariel Atkins had 14.It was an eye opener today, McCarty said. We kind of have to take that and roll with it. We just got outplayed and we got beat.A junior guard with 11 career starts over her first two college seasons, McPhee is taking on a bigger role for VanDerveers young team. And Texas, which beat Stanford the past two seasons, didnt have an answer for her accuracy.The Longhorns ended the Cardinals 28-game home winning streak with an 87-81 overtime win at Maples Pavilion on Nov. 20, 2014, when Stanford was ranked sixth and Texas No. 10 -- the programs first win over a top-10 team in almost six years. It marked the first meeting when both teams were in the top-10.That year, Stanford couldnt make it two in a row after beating No. 1 Connecticut 88-86 in overtime three nights earlier to snap the Huskies 47-game winning streak.Then Texas won again last season in Austin, 77-69.Stanford was too much this time.When you get beat sometimes all you do is talk about what your team wasnt good at but I would say that midway through the second quarter they really broke our defense down, Texas coach Karen Aston said. Were young and a little bit immature and I thought that we started panicking a little bit. We missed some free throws and our confidence got rattled a little bit at the end of the first half and we werent able to recover from that.BIG PICTURETexas: The Longhorns held a 38-32 rebounding edge but were just 6 for 14 at the free throw line. They lost a season opener for the first time under fifth-year coach Aston (4-1). ... Aston coached her 300th career game. She is now 190-110 starting her 10th season as a college coach and 89-47 in her fifth season leading the Longhorns. ... Texas started the season on the road for only the second time in the past 13 years.Stanford: McCall was one off her career high in blocks. She had three blocks in a season-opening win against Cal Poly on Friday and now has nine through two games. I love blocked shots, she said. ... The Cardinal are 15-4 at home against top-10 teams over the last 10-plus seasons and 139-7 at Maples since 2007-08.UP NEXTTexas: The Longhorns host Houston Baptist on Wednesday morning in their home opener, an 11 a.m. local time tipoff for the programs annual 40 Acres Field Trip game for middle-school students from around Texas and a day that includes educational activities.Stanford: The Cardinal have another tough opponent Friday at home against West Coast Conference power Gonzaga, winner of 11 of the last 12 WCC regular-season titles and picked to do so again. Custom Orioles T-shirts . -- Cam Newton pranced into the end zone, placed his hands over his chest and did his familiar Superman pose. Custom Orioles Jersey China . LOUIS -- Cardinals cleanup hitter Allen Craig says hes recovered from a foot injury and ready to be put on St. http://www.customoriolesjersey.com/ . -- Damian Lillard and LaMarcus Alrdridge were again the go-to duo for the Trail Blazers against the Kings. Custom Frank Robinson Jersey . -- Catcher Brett Hayes has agreed to a $630,000, one-year contract with the Kansas City Royals, avoiding salary arbitration. Brooks Robinson Jersey Large .ca NBA Power Rankings, ahead of the Miami Heat and San Antonio Spurs. If you drive a few minutes south of Copacabana, the beach thats currently teeming with American athletes and tourists, youll stumble onto the richest neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro. Leblon, named after a French plantation owner, is a quiet, stylish enclave of young investment bankers and affluent families; when I walked through the area Friday night, I passed juice shops, gelato counters and a café selling $14 burgers and Caipirinha-flavored shakes. I stopped to watch the opening ceremony at a bar packed with well-heeled 20-somethings, one of whom told me that the reported turmoil surrounding the Games was overblown. Now its inevitable, he said. People are like: Lets have fun.Marco, 25, is a lawyer who grew up not far from Leblon, in Rios glamorous South Zone. His father is a lawyer too. He said he had heard there were protests near some of the stadiums but that he hadnt seen them firsthand. He complained about the traffic, which was stressful. I asked him if he thought the Olympics would hurt or help the favelas, the sprawling hillside neighborhoods where millions of locals live in abject poverty, and he admitted that, despite being born and raised here, he had never visited one. Didnt have a reason, he said, shrugging.The Olympics might be taking place in Rio this month, but theyre really being hosted by two cities: The glittering beaches and upscale districts where most of the athletes, dignitaries and journalists who have descended on the region are staying this month, and, well, everywhere else. This is a microcosm for Brazil writ large. While spending programs directed at the urban poor have narrowed the wealth gap over the past two decades, those hard-fought gains have slipped during the recent recession. Unemployment and poverty are rising, and the GINI coefficient, which tracks inequality, is up.Nearly half of the billionaires in Latin America, according to Forbes, live in Brazil, where the top 20 percent of the country earns nearly 60 percent of its income. The poor got a lot better off in the past 15 or 20 years -- but the very rich also got a lot richer, said Alex Cuadros, a journalist who recently published a book about the countrys titans of industry called Brazillionaires. Districts such as Leblon, Ipanema and Barra, where the Olympic Park and media village were built, have become hotbeds for Rios ascendant upper class. Many of the people who live in these neighborhoods live cloistered, privileged lives. They send their children to private schools, use private hospitals and live in gated complexes with enviable views. Some millionaires avoid the citys crowded streets altogether: They can skip traffic by flying over Rio in helicopters, which cost more than $1,000 per hour.Cuadros, who spent several years investigating the affluent class, said the rise of Brazils super rich is intimately tied to the current economic crisis, which was caused by a toxic brew of imploding commodity prices, soaring debt and government corruption. The government subsidized large corporations owned by billionaires by giving them huge tax breaks, espeecially in the last six years, and hundreds of billions of dollars in low-interest government loans, he said.ddddddddddddThese elites also have benefited disproportionately from the run-up to the Olympics. Construction magnates -- some of whom are caught up in the current political scandal -- were given massive contracts to build overwrought infrastructure projects; officials are investigating some of them for skimming money off the top.While the government has invested in a smattering of projects that will benefit the lower class, Cuadros points out that it has poured money into developments in wealthy southern neighborhoods such as Barra, the new endpoint for the much-touted subway line (which also runs through ritzy Ipanema). Once the Games are over, the athletes village --?built by a billionaire with close ties to Rios mayor --?will be turned into a luxury condominium complex. There is a vast north side of the city where millions of working Brazilians live, and desperately need infrastructure, Cuadros said. Despite the gains of the poor, and despite the social programs of the last decade or so -- the bias has always been toward the interests of the elites in Brazil.Between the financial crisis and the ongoing probe into ties between government and industry -- which has brought several businessmen to their knees -- the citys elites have taken a few hits. But many are already bouncing back. According to Bloomberg News, Brazils billionaires have seen their fortunes rebound this year more than their peers in any other country in the world; as of May, Jorge Paulo Lemann, the countrys richest man, added $1.9 billion to his assets. And while the government is flailing under a mountain of debt, Cuadros said Brazils tax system, which is highly regressive -- dividends, for example, are untaxed --?is unlikely to change.Now theres this crisis, and who is being forced to give things up? he said. Its the poor, far more so than the rich.When cities bid for the right to host the Olympics, they typically hone in on the concept of legacy, painting vivid dreams of how the Games will bring about positive, sustainable change. Rio was no exception. But while the projects littered across the city have lined the pockets of the rich, it seems unlikely that many of them will improve the lives of those who need it most. According to a recent census, some 8 million Brazilians live in urban areas without garbage services. Imagine if the government had invested a fraction of the Games $12 billion budget into those neighborhoods instead.In Leblon, where the cobblestone sidewalks were spotless and the air smelled like orchids, complaints about the event were few and far between. When the ceremony spotlighted the citys favelas, bathing a facsimile of the slums in neon lights, the people in the bar craned their necks. For some of them, it was the closest theyll get to the other side of Rio, a city that contains multitudes living miles apart. ' ' '