(Tucson, AZ) The Cats fresh off their win over #24 California wanted to keep the momentum going against #6 Stanford.
The Cardinal jumped out to a 5 -0 lead until Sam Thomas hit a baseline three pointer off the baseline at the 6:41 mark of the opening quarter. That seemed to settle things down a bit for Arizona who came out tight.
At the first media timeout Stanford had a 10-5 lead. Kiana Williams has half of the Cardinal points.
The plan the Wildcats wanted was to keep the game within reach.
Stanford’s perimeter game was the best the Cats have played so far this year. On the other side of the ball, McDonald missed four three point shots in the quarter.
Arizona play in the first quarter was tentative as they trailed 21-12 at the end of the first quarter.
The Cardinal’s Williams continued to carry the load with seven points to pace Stanford. McDonald had seven points for the Cats.
Stanford continued its solid play into the second quarter hitting three’s and a 6-0 run to extend the lead to 31-16.
The trees of Stanford had a big edge on the boards at the second Media time out 21-14.
McDonald was bottled up much of the first half by a stingy Cardinal defense that packed the paint and made it difficult for her to drive and shoot or dish. Stanford’s Alanna Smith with six first half blocks made driving difficult for Arizona.
Arizona has good looks but the basketball gods were not kind with several shots rolling around the rim and out and fell behind big 44-16 at the half with the Cardinal outscoring Arizona 23-4 in the second quarter.
The Cats shot 19.4% from the field and had difficulty manufacturing points. Subsequently, Stanford shot 75% in the second quarter and 5-6 from beyond the arc enroute to their twenty eight halftime lead.
Keeping the pedal down, the Cardinal started the second half on a 8-1 run.
Mcdoanld’s drives unlike other games were consistently being blocked. There was a lot of standing around on offense by the Wildcats.
Midway through the third quarter, Lucia Alonso hit back to back three’s but Zona had already dug itself a huge hole at 56-23.
At the third quarter media break, Stanford was 10-19 from three point land. Williams, Smith and DiJonal Carrigmton were 9-13 from downtown.
Not letting the Wildcats up for air, the lead grew to 62-27 in favor of the #6 team in the land.
Through three quarters Arizona shot 9-48 from the field for a 18.8% clip. A third of the Cats makes were three pointers.
The offense woke up a bit for Arizona in the fourth with two jumpers by Alonso and went on a 13-7 run to the last media timeout to make it 69-40 game.
With 4:10 to go in the game, Coach Adia Barnes took out her starters and let the reserves get some conference experience.
One bright spot for the Cats was winning the fourth quarter 21-16 in an otherwise forgetful effort. The final score was 78-48.
Stanford shot 44% from the field, including thirteen three pointers.
Coach Barnes said, “I’m not unhappy with a split at home, I thought we would have played better today.”
This game will strengthen the team inasmuch creating a barometer of where they need to go to become a top tier program.
The journey doesn’t get any easier as the Cats head out in the road to the Oregon schools who are both ranked in the top 25. In this stretch, Arizona has to play four ranked teams in a row.
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