The UCLA women’s basketball team didn’t have an
ounce of fight left in them Thursday after being dismantled,
destroyed, and utterly embarrassed by No. 5 Stanford.
Without their leading scorer Noelle Quinn, who had successful
arthroscopic surgery on her left knee Wednesday, the No. 25 Bruins
headed to Maples Pavilion and were trampled by the Cardinal
100-75.
“We wanted to come in and put forth a good team effort and
just try to regroup without Noelle,” UCLA coach Kathy Olivier
said. “We did it for 10 minutes, but then they started
hitting the three and that took the air out of our
sails.”
UCLA (11-6, 5-3 Pac-10) trailed by five with 12:31 in the first
half, but that’s the closest the Bruins would get.
Stanford erupted on a 20-4 run as the Cardinal was equally
deadly from short-range as it was from behind-the-arc.
Stanford (16-2, 7-1) finished the half firing a scorching
10-of-18 3-point range with guard Kelley Suminski, who finished
with a team-high 21 points, accounting for four of them in the
first half.
“We called a couple of time outs, we made all kinds of
subs, there wasn’t a lot we could have done
differently,” said Olivier of cooling down Stanford, who shot
56 percent from the field for the game and hit 15 3-pointers.
The headache the Bruins will have to deal with from this point
forward until the Pac-10 Tournament in March will be trying to find
someone, anyone, who can come off the bench and contribute.
Junior Ortal Oren, freshman Lauren Pedersen and sophomore Shaina
Zaidi are the three guards Olivier has called upon to fill
Quinn’s shoes. Yet, the three against the Cardinal could only
muster nine points on 4-of-10 shooting along with committing eight
of the Bruins’ 18 turnovers.
“They are going to get better and better with more
experience,” Olivier said. “They have to make sure they
are going to have productive minutes. They need to do the little
things well; not trying to score all the time, taking care of the
ball.
“They need to keep their heads up, hopefully they’ll
go out and have confidence.”
One of the lone bright spots for the Bruins on the night was the
play of guards Lisa Willis and Nikki Blue.
Willis finished with 25 points and hit 7 of 11 shots from beyond
the arc.
Blue, who appears to be on her way back to 100 percent after
suffering from nagging injuries all season, had a game-high 26
points. The junior attacked the hoop throughout the game, heading
to the free throw line 16 times and converting on 14 from the
charity stripe.
“Lisa Willis did a great job, she had a fire to her that
we need every game,” Olivier said. “Nikki and Lisa kept
each other poised.”
The Cardinal led by as many as 34 points, 84-50, with 7:20
remaining in the game.
For the Bruins, the 25-point margin was their worst loss of the
season. UCLA had previously lost by 23 to Ohio State earlier in the
season.
After the game, the Bruins were disappointed at the thrashing
they received, but they’ll have a chance to make it up this
weekend when they head to Cal.
“We learned obviously the whole team needs to step up,
play harder, and fight every game we step into,” freshman
forward Lindsey Pluimer said.