I said around Halloween that the AP poll was off for ranking Stanford as the preseason #2, because losing the Hull sisters and Anna Wilson to graduation was going to affect Stanford more than the voters thought.
My friend the Stanford season ticketholder agreed that the voters weren’t accounting for Lexie Hull’s intangibles. (Whereas the Indiana Fever overdid.)
Sportswriters don’t like change. They want to preserve status quo because it preserves the stories they’ve already written, and sustains their use of cliché. For example, who felt worse about Iowa getting bounced early in last year’s NCAA tournament: Iowa or the media, whose pre-made Caitlin Clark content was suddenly rubbish?
Stanford, you might agree now if not last week, is far behind last season’s group. Coach VanDerveer knows. If you heard her during her sideline interview at halftime of the UCLA game, she was as steamed as she gets.
I’d hoped it would be Utah breaking Stanford’s unbeaten-in-conference-for-almost-two-years string, but for USC getting there first, I can further illustrate a point.
Say Stanford falls to #4 and Utah rises to #8 in tomorrow’s poll, then Utah wins in Maple Pavilion next Friday. Do you think their poll positions would change, like #6 Utah and #7 Stanford? Not a chance, because sports media think they’d burst into flames for voting Stanford other than top of the Pacific-12. If it were up to sports media, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak would still be going.
USC 55 Stanford 46
Where do you begin? Stanford scored 4 points in the first quarter, shooting 2-for-10. In total, the Cardinal scored 4 points off turnovers, and 0 points on the break. USC led by 8 going into the fourth quarter, and Stanford didn’t get closer than 6 (while shooting 5-for-19). That’s not the Cardinal.
Haley Jones and Cameron Brink shot 6-for-27, after Pac-12 Network spent an entire week hyping the game as a showcase for them. Together with Hannah Jump, the seniors missed 10 3-point attempts while making 0. I’ve never seen Jump shoot ohfer. I’d venture that this is the first 0-for-5 of her life.
“It wasn’t just turnovers; it was bad shot [selection],” said coach VanDerveer. “I don’t know that we can do anything any worse. This has to be rock bottom in terms of execution offensively.”
USC stayed even in the standings with Washington State, who also upset a top 25 team, Oregon. (When Pac-12 Network talking heads say it’s the best conference in the country, consider this: If the tournament began tomorrow, USC’s reward for beating Stanford is a first-round game with Oregon State. Then Oregon State goes to the WNIT, where they kill it. The Beavers are scary, and in the Pac-12, they’re 2-5.)
I’m sorry I find it harder to see USC’s accomplishment for their positives rather than for Stanford’s negatives. And to be further inclined to chalk it up as what the chess genius Capablanca called a ‘therapeutic thrashing’ after starting to think he was invincible.
Utah got that wakeup call in Boulder. Stanford got theirs in the Galen Center. Who’s looking forward to Friday?!
| Stanford jersey no. | Player | Hollinger ‘gamescore’ |
| 22 | Brink,Cameron | 10.1 |
| 10 | Lepolo,Talana | 3.6 |
| 30 | Jones,Haley | 4.9 |
| 44 | Iriafen,Kiki | -0.1 |
| 33 | Jump,Hannah | -3.3 |
| 21 | Demetre,Brooke | 4.8 |
| 02 | Emma-Nnopu,Agnes | -0.3 |
| 11 | Prechtel,Ashten | 1.6 |
| 12 | Nivar,Indya | 0.9 |
| 32 | Harriel,Jzaniya | -0.1 |
| 51 | Betts,Lauren | -0.7 |
| 05 | Belibi,Francesca | -1 |
| 20 | Bosgana,Elena | 0 |
| USC jersey no. | Player | Hollinger ‘gamescore’ |
| 11 | Littleton, Destiny | 14.1 |
| 24 | Adika, Okako | 9.8 |
| 01 | Bigby, Taylor | 8.6 |
| 04 | Williams, Kayla | 6 |
| 13 | Marshall, Rayah | 0.8 |
| 34 | Akunwafo, Clarice | 4.1 |
| 25 | Miura, Alyson | -1.8 |
Utah 80 Arizona 79
Junior forward Alissa Pili scored 27 points, including two free throws with 0.3 seconds on the game clock, to lead #10 Utah past #14 Arizona.
Pili shouldn’t win another conference player of the week for that, because Utah only played one game for Arizona State’s forfeit. Hand it to USC’s Destiny Littleton for scoring 18 points in each of the Trojans’ wins over the Bay Area schools.
Arizona stayed in character by losing when they couldn’t hold their opponents under 70. Utah stayed in character when they nearly lost it with 5 seconds left.
Coach Roberts’ teams are accustomed to the scrappy underdog role; the targeted favorite part will take some getting used to. One of the Pac-12 Network people said Coach Roberts said so herself, so I can type it now.
The 2013 Pacific Tigers solidly won the Big West regular season championship, but narrowly beat CS Fullerton in the tournament quarterfinal (after beating the Titans by 12 and 31 in season), and looked like crap while losing in the semifinal to Cal Poly. I watched that team go last-to-first in the course of four years, so I can type it now.
Trailing by one with 8 seconds left, Arizona pressured Utah into one inbounds pass that the Wildcats tipped away. Then with 5 seconds remaining, Arizona coaxed a turnover, which Paris Clark capitalized on to go ahead 79-78.
I give the officials credit for making the right call on Utah’s last inbounds play. The pass from the sideline found Pili on the baseline amidst three defenders. She was fouled, and awarded the decisive free throws.
Sports fans love to blame the officials, especially if an incorrect call in the endgame alters the result. If a correct call changes things, they still scream “Let them play!”, but look like bigger idiots while doing so. Pili was fouled, well captured on video. If the game had been in Tucson, the fans would still be howling (and they’d be wrong).
Utah sophomore guard Gianna Kneepkens scored 11 points, gathered two defensive rebounds, made one assist in the fourth quarter.
I think I was wrong about Utah needing to exploit Arizona’s weakside help cheating away from the ball and thinking they can always recover.
| Arizona jersey no. | Player | Hollinger ‘gamescore’ |
| 25 | Reese,Cate | 21.4 |
| 30 | Loville,Jade | 10.2 |
| 01 | Pellington,Shaina | 11.2 |
| 12 | Martinez,Esmery | 3.6 |
| 23 | Fields,Lauren | -1.2 |
| 22 | Clark,Paris | 10 |
| 13 | Pueyo,Helena | 7 |
| 34 | Nnaji,Maya | 0.3 |
| 15 | Gilbert,Kailyn | -0.1 |
| 10 | Hylton,Lemyah | -1.1 |
| 04 | Conner,Madison | 0 |
| Utah jersey no. | Player | Hollinger ‘gamescore’ |
| 35 | Pili, Alissa | 17.8 |
| 05 | Kneepkens, Gianna | 16.9 |
| 01 | Palmer, Issy | 7 |
| 22 | Johnson, Jenna | 4.2 |
| 24 | McQueen, Kennady | 6.1 |
| 34 | Young, Dasia | 3.3 |
| 32 | Sidberry, Teya | 2.5 |
| 53 | Rees, Kelsey | -2.4 |
| 02 | Vieira, Inês | -0.7 |
UCLA 87 California 70
UCLA led by one after three quarters, then Cal lost the thread. There were 10 rebounds to be had in the fourth quarter, and the Bruins, such a good offensive-rebounding team, got 8.
8 UCLA gained a game on Stanford, and is one game back of the coveted double tournament bye.
You might look at Cal senior Kemery Martin’s line as a metaphor for the team. She hit her first seven shots (the last of the seven was a remarkable reverse layup), then 1-for-the-last-6. She ended with a game-high 23, and if she’d stayed hot and carried Cal to an upset, I would spend a page talking about change of scenery doing her good.
Kemery wore a Hendrix T-shirt to one of her last team gatherings with the Utes. That’s the sort of free-spiritedness that plays better in Berkeley than in Salt Lake City.
I’ll be dead soon, and I’m glad Hendrix will stay alive on the T-shirts of kids like Kemery Martin and one of my frequent chess club opponents. The kid is always wearing a T-shirt that gets highest marks: Beatles, Pink Floyd, Hendrix. He said his dad has an extensive classic rock collection, insisted he be familiar, and here we are.
I wish I’d talked to Kemery while she was in Utah. You might say ‘won’t it be easier now that you work a mile from Haas, and she works at Haas?’, but I think Cal is mad at me for some reason. None of the emails I’ve sent to berkeley dot edu this basketball season was answered, which surprises me in the case of assistant coach Heintz, one of my favorite players at two schools.