The door closed on Stanford senior Nicole Powell’s
illustrious women’s basketball career in front of the
Cardinal faithful at Maples Pavilion on Saturday afternoon.
It may also have slammed shut on UCLA’s hopes of earning
an at-large bid to this year’s NCAA tournament.
Riding a season-best six-game winning streak going into their
Pac-10 showdown with first-place Stanford in Palo Alto, the Bruins
ran into a buzz saw that UCLA coach Kathy Olivier is all too
familiar with. Behind Powell’s strong farewell performance in
her final regular season home game, the No. 10 Cardinal defeated
UCLA for the 10th consecutive time, winning a nip-and-tuck contest
63-54 and delivering a severe blow to UCLA’s postseason
chances.
And once again it was Powell, the conference’s leading
scorer and rebounder, who stepped up in the game’s waning
moments and was the primary culprit in the Cardinal victory.
“They have one of the best players in the country on their
team, if not the best,” Olivier said. “She’s
beaten us too many times. But our team would definitely be up for
playing them a third time on a neutral floor.”
Powell, who had a team-high 14 points and 15 rebounds, has
torched the Bruins (15-11, 10-7 Pac-10) throughout her four-year
career. Last season, the senior hit a game-winning runner against
UCLA in the final seconds at Pauley Pavilion, and effectively ended
the Bruins’ season by burying a 35-footer in the final minute
of the Cardinal’s Pac-10 Tournament semifinal victory.
With Stanford (20-5, 13-3) leading 55-52 Saturday, Powell
drained a clutch three-pointer from the left corner, drowning the
Bruins’ hopes once again.
“UCLA is a very good team, but we just came out and played
harder,” Powell said.
While the outcome of the game was in the balance for the
majority of the contest, Stanford pulled away midway through the
second half, turning a two-point halftime deficit into a 14-point
lead that left the Bruins’ legs weary.
For UCLA, the effort and strain of playing at such a high level
during their six-game winning streak was finally apparent.
The Bruins’ futility on offense, shooting 29.9 percent as
a team, combined with their lack of quickness on defense, hampered
their comeback attempt against a fundamentally sound Stanford
team.
“We couldn’t get anything going offensively,”
Olivier said. “At the end we didn’t have as much gas as
we would have liked.”
“This was a really tough place to play,” freshman
Noelle Quinn added. “The ball just wasn’t going in for
us today.”
Besides UCLA’s six-game winning streak, Quinn had a few
streaks of her own come to a halt.
While the freshman led the Bruins with 17 points and 12
rebounds, her run of consecutive games with at least 20 points
ended at six, now a Bruin freshman record. Quinn also missed her
first free-throw attempt, ending her string of 30 consecutive
conversions from the charity stripe, just three shy of the Pac-10
record.
But it was Stanford’s defense of UCLA sophomore point
guard Nikki Blue that jammed the spokes of the wheels of the Bruin
offense. Blue was limited to 3-of-12 shooting from the field,
finishing with seven points and plenty of frustration over what
appeared to be a lack of whistles.
“Nikki didn’t get any calls,” Olivier said.
“The poor kid worked her tail off.”
Given up for dead three weeks ago, the resurrected Bruins have
mounted a late charge through the Pac-10 to bolster their
tournament resume. While Saturday’s loss to Stanford may
prove to be the fatal hiccup, UCLA still sees a dim light at the
end of its tunnel as it prepares to host crosstown rival USC in its
final game of the season.
“We’re still optimistic,” Quinn said.
“We still have one more game left and you never know. The
Pac-10 is crazy right now.”