The Stanford Cardinal was without their best player in Candice Wiggins. It didn’t matter.
In what has become routine for the Bruins (13-16, 7-10 Pac-10), the UCLA women’s basketball team could not complete a late comeback as Stanford found other offensive threats and clamped down on defense in the final minutes to seal a 65-54 victory in Palo Alto.
Wiggins, one of the best guards in the conference, did not play because of an injured hamstring as the Stanford post players took it upon themselves to dominate the game.
Although the Cardinal (24-4, 16-1 Pac-10) had their way in the paint, the Bruins found themselves in a close game throughout the first half.
“We were right there at halftime down by one,” UCLA coach Kathy Olivier said. “But in the second half it just got a little out of hand.”
The Bruins were only down by five points with five minutes remaining but failed to capitalize on one-and-one opportunities and were shut down on offense in the final minutes.
“The game’s 40 minutes long,” Olivier said. “We just got on a lull. Our focus was there and our intensity was there, we just never got into a flow.”
Despite the absence of Wiggins, the Cardinal inside game hurt the Bruins, constantly getting the ball early and often to their forwards.
“We just wanted to go inside to Jayne (Appel),” Stanford forward Brooke Smith told ESPN.com. “She has an advantage in there and we were really trying to take care of the ball and get the ball inside to her.”
Forward Appel came off the bench and put up 24 points and fellow forward Smith added 14 as the Cardinal abandoned their perimeter game.
“With Wiggins not on the floor, they’re a different basketball team,” Olivier told ESPN.com. “They don’t do as much penetration and obviously they weren’t shooting their 3s. But they’ll attack you in other ways. Their other ways tonight were obviously their post players. They worked the ball inside to Brooke and Jayne and that really hurt us.”
Stanford only shot two 3-pointers and missed them both. It broke their streak of 403 consecutive games with a trey. For Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer it was rewarding to see the Cardinal put up points without their leader.
“It’s a good challenge for our team,” VanDerveer told ESPN.com. “We can’t do anything about (Wiggins’ being injured). We’re not having a pity party and if we did nobody would show up.
“I just think it’s going to make us better. Sure, we want Candice out there. But that challenges other people to step up and I thought they did really well.”
With the win, the Cardinal clinched at least a share of the Pac-10 title while UCLA has one regular-season conference game to tune up for the Pac-10 Tournament. The Bruins will most likely need to win the conference tournament for a bid to the NCAA Tournament.