1. Stanford (6-0). The Cardinal head into their two weeks finals break with a big win over Gonzaga and a firm grip on their No. 2 national ranking. Nobody can compete with Stanford inside so far. Kayla Pedersen and Nneka Ogwumike are playing incredibly well. Injuries are making the ranks a little thin, but there’s some time to get healthy and refuel.
2. USC (3-3). It was a very, very good weekend for the Women of Troy in Paradise. As in the Paradise Jam, where USC knocked off two ranked teams in consecutive days, beating Texas and Mississippi State. Looming is next Sunday’s date at Duke.
3. Arizona State (4-1). A lot of teams looked pretty good losing this week, but the 17^th-ranked Sun Devils keep winning, moving to 4-1 with a win over East Tennessee State in Hawaii.
4. UCLA (4-2). The Bruins built a 10-point lead over Tennessee in Knoxville, but lost the ability to keep the Lady Vols off the boards and then lost the game. UCLA, however, is showing itself to be a very difficult defensive matchup.
5. Cal (3-2). The Bears have lost two of three games, both to highly ranked teams. Oddly enough, it’s Cal’s guard play that needs an upgrade before the Bears host their tournament next weekend, which includes a likely Sunday matchup against Texas A&M.
6. Gonzaga (4-2). The Zags put up 74 points against Stanford, more points than the Cardinal have given up all year. They played well against a team that played superbly. No dishonor in that. This would be a top 3 team in the Pac-10.
7. Oregon (5-1). The Ducks put up 117 points against Fullerton and then crashed back to earth with a 58-57 loss to Wisconsin. The record looks great, but strength of schedule counts. Oregon is still averaging 86.8 points a game.
8. Arizona (4-1). The Wildcats are winning the games in front of them. Coming up, a tough stretch against Nevada, New Mexico and Georgia Tech, which may bust into the rankings this week.
9. San Diego State (3-3). The Aztecs need to regroup after their humbling Caribbean weekend in which they lost three straight games. Out of the rankings they go. It might be tough to get back in.
10. Oregon State (4-1). Not unlike Oregon and Arizona – and not unlike last season – the Beavers are building a strong record without taking on any substantive challenges.

Kelly Graves, who I’ve known since the days as the St. Mary’s head coach, has himself a very nice team. This is a team that would do very well in the Pac-10.

http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com/2009/11/29/gonzaga-gets-a-taste-of-major-leagues/

On Sunday evening, the No. 2-ranked Stanford Cardinal rested.

The rest, however, will be short-lived, even if the break lasts two weeks.

On Dec. 13, Stanford will return to the floor for a stretch of regular-season games unprecedented in the history of the program. DePaul. Duke. Tennessee. Connecticut.

Stanford's Nneka Ogwumike goes up against Gonzaga defenders Heather Bowman (30) and Vivian Frieson (12). Photo credit: Deb Gumbley

But as a warm-up, the Cardinal did a difficult thing at Maples Pavilion, they made a pretty good team look like another overwhelmed, overmatched opponent.

Taking on Gonzaga, one of the top mid-major programs in the country, a team building to a nice crescendo under head coach Kelly Graves, Stanford won going away, 105-74.

Proving once again to be the “big three” in every measurable way – Kayla Pedersen, Nneka Ogwumike and Jayne Appel delivered most of the damage.

• Pedersen, who looks more confident, more skilled, more like an All-American with every passing game, put up a career-high 30 points in a do-everything performance that included inside scoring, outside scoring (3 3-pointers), free-throw scoring (9 of 11 from the line), seven rebounds, four assists and a couple of steals.
• Nneka Ogwumike almost matched it. Ogwumike finished with career-bests in scoring with 29 points and rebounds with 13. She was 12 of 19 from the field, and essentially unstoppable.
• Appel, still recovering from a flu bug that took four IV bags to overcome just two days ago, finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds, one board shy of the 1,000^th of her Stanford career.

Between the three – 74 points, 30 rebounds, 10 assists, four steals. Ridiculous. Remarkable.

Ogwumike said the success is contagious.

“Like a good disease,” Ogwumike said.

“They made a statement,” VanDerveer said of her prolific trio. “We were going to go inside and they finished well. Before the game I challenged our team. Yesterday’s football game (a dramatic win over Notre Dame) was so exciting. I want to feel that way at the end of our game.”

The Cardinal didn’t make it nearly so suspenseful, didn’t need any Toby Gerhart Heisman heroics to nail down a win.

Instead, they jumped out to a quick lead with a razor-sharp offense and then kept the accelerator to the floor.

Stanford was up 59-38 at the half and hit the century mark for the first time this season. They did it against a very capable Bulldogs team that features national-level talents such as forward Heather Bowman (15 points), point guard Courtney Vandersloot (10 points, 12 assists) and the nice addition of Washington transfer Katelan Redmon (15 points). Forward Janelle Bekkering led the way with 16 points, including four 3-pointers.

“This is a great win for us,” VanDerveer said. “Gonzaga is really a top team. I was very impressed with them.”

Now the break for finals.

And preparations for a run of games that could prove defining.

“We’re glad we had a good game today to go into the break,” Appel said. “I think it is coming out and focusing each day, every play in practice instead of saying we have these four games in front of us like a looming cloud above us. We need to come out every day and prepare ourselves mentally for that practice. As long as do that, we’ll come in strong and ready to go.”

More postgame quote highlights:

Tara VanDerveer on Ogwumike:

“Nneka just took charge today. One on one, on Friday, Nneka wasn’t doing what she did today. She used her jumping ability to go up over people and score and just said, ‘you can’t stop me.’”

VanDerveer on injuries, including guard Melanie Murphy, who incurred a knee injury at practice on Tuesday. MRI results showed no ligament tears.

“It really is how she feels,” VanDerveer said. “We are really thankful it’s not an  ACL or MCL, but I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going to happen. If she gets scoped, it will be a month. If she doesn’t, maybe she can come back in a couple of weeks, or a week, depending on how it feels. We just have to wait and see. “

Jayne Appel on the flu:

“Friday was a struggle. I was talking to my teammates and they were telling me to keep pushing through it. I don’t think I’m at 100 percent yet. But that’s the good thing about a two-week break.”

Nneka Ogwumike on inspiration:

“Coach always says that we have to play like ‘I can score and no one can stop me and no one is going to score on me.’ And I truly think that’s the mentality that anyone who is looking to help their team should have. Once you have all of those attitudes, collectively, the team is unstoppable.”

Starting the second half

• At first media timeout, Stanford leads 66-45.
• Vivian Frieson picked up her third foul at 15:57.
• Stanford is 20 of 22 from the free-throw line. Gonzaga is 6 of 9.
• Nneka Ogwumike has matched her season high with 25. She needs two more to match her career high. Uh, think she might get it.
• With 12:54 to go, Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen and Ogwumike have combined for 60 points.
• Pedersen is at 23 points and her career high is 28.
• At the 11:36 media timeout, Cardinal up 82-54. Way back up on the boards, by a 33-21 margin.
• Gonzaga getting a nice game from forward Janella Bekkering with 16 points.
• Ogwumike scores in transition to match her career high with 27 points.
• Ogwumike comes out at 9:39. It’s probably temporary.
• And now Pedersen has matched her career high with 28.
• Media timeout at 7:40, Stanford up 89-62. Ogwumike at a double-double with 27 points and 10 rebounds.
• Jayne Appel needs one rebound for 1,000 in her Stanford career. She will be just the third player in program history to reach that number, along with Nicole Powell (1,143) and Val Whiting (1,134). Sure looks like Appel will own that record by the end of the season.
• It’s official. New career high for Kayla Pedersen with 30 points. Just heard VanDerveer tell Pedersen upon her exit from the floor, ‘Get a blow, you’re going back in.’
• New career high for Ogwumike at 29.
• Jeanette Pohlen’s 3-pointer from the right wing gives Stanford 100 points for the first time this season.
• Ogwumike hits 13 rebounds, also a career high. Just spotted her Stanford-bound sister, Chiney, sitting along the sideline.
• Ogwumike comes out with 29 points, 13 rebounds.
• All the starters are out now with two minutes to go.

Final score: Stanford 105, Gonzaga 74

Will keep posting throughout the half, keep refreshing.

Pregame musings

• From the looks of the players on the floor, Gonzaga looks like the biggest team Stanford has faced to date this season.
• Senior guard Melanie Murphy is in street clothes for the second consecutive game, out with a knee injury sustained in practice on Tuesday. Murphy, who missed most of the 2007-08 season with a torn anterior cruciate ligament, will be evaluated further. Initial tests did not show another ACL tear, coach Tara VanDerveer said before the game. Murphy has been giving the Cardinal valuable reserve minutes in the backcourt, averaging 13 minutes a game.

Starting lineups

Gonzaga

• 11 Janelle Bekkering F
• 12 Vivian Frieson F
• 21 Courtney Vandersloot G
• 30 Heather Bowman F
• 34 Tiffany Shives G

Stanford

• 2 Jayne Appel c
• 14 Kayla Pedersen F
• 21 Ros Gold-Onwude G
• 23 Jeanette Pohlen G
• 30 Nneka Ogwumike F

First half notes

• Good start for Ogwmike, six of Stanford’s first eight points.
• Cardinal controlling things inside with Ogwumike and Appel accounting for all of the offense in 10-6 lead.
• Stanford moves out 15-6 on another bucket in the paint by Ogwumike.
• At first timeout with 15:53 to go, Cardinal up 17-9, and are 6-for-6 from the field. Gonzaga 4 of 10 and 1 of 4 from beyond the arc.
• With a free-throw at 14:46, Kayla Pedersen scored the 1,000th point of her career.
• Gold-Onwude comes in for Appel and STanford is playing its three-guard lineup with Hones, Pohlen and Gold-Onwude.
• Gold-Onwude picks up second foul and that should be the end of the three guards.
• Media timeout at 11:42 and Stanford is taking apart a very good Gonzaga team, shooting 73.3 percent, going 8-for-8 from the line and out-rebounding 9-4.
• Katelan Redmond, the transfer from Washington, has hit a pair of nice baskets off the bench.
• Appel picks up her second foul and goes to the bench at 10:45. Michelle Harrison in the game.
• Gonzaga calls timeout with 8:26 to go, Kayla Pedersen just hit back-to-back baskets to give Cardinal a 41-23 lead and 14 points on the tally sheet.
• Media timeout at 7:19. Stanford up 43-25. Cardinal have 15 assists on 16 baskets. Gonzaga 11 of 22 from the field, but 2 of 8 from beyond the arc.
• Gonzaga’s Vivian Freison picks up second foul at 6:46. She’s staying in the game.
• Stanford’s at 50 with 5:46 left in the first half. An offensive show.
• Ogwumike has 17 points after a beautiful baseline slide and score, and then she converted the free throw.
• At the media timeout with 3:46 to go, Gonzaga closing in on the boards, down 16-13 in the rebounding margin. Cardinal have cooled to 60 percent shooting.
• Pedersen to the line for the second time today after being fouled on a 3-point shot. She makes 2 of 3, Stanford’s first miss from the line today.

Halftime score: Stanford 59, Gonzaga 38

Ogwumike leads Stanford with 19. Pedersen has 18. And because of injuries, they’ll both be playing a lot more in the second half.

• UCLA couldn't sustain it. Vols will win, but Pac-10 better beware of the Bruins. Still think they are No. 2 team in the conference. #
• Since getting down 24-14 in the first half, Tennessee has outscored UCLA 17-3. #
• UCLA up 27-25 at the half against Tennessee at Thompson-Boling. Pretty impressive so far. Bruins are boarding! #
• Too soon for an upset alert? UCLA up on Tennessee 24-19 in Knoxville. 2:30 left in first half. #
• UCLA's Nikki Caldwell returns to Tennessee. Read it on Fanhouse. http://bit.ly/65rsXc #
• Today in Fanhouse…http://bit.ly/8VRKFo http://bit.ly/7PR4cv #
• Best of the West – weekly power rankings are up. http://bit.ly/6nYOFT #
• Whole bunch of people showed up to Berkeley on Sunday to see Brittney Griner dunk. She tried, she missed and they… http://bit.ly/08CbBIa #

Jayne Appel is the Cardinal’s player of the year candidate, Nneka Ogwumike is its breakout talent, but it’s junior Kayla Pedersen who is the Cardinal’s leading scorer headed into what is likely the Cardinal’s most telling stretch of the season.

Headed into Sunday’s game against Gonzaga, a team that’s gaining votes in the national polls, Pedersen is coming off an 18-point, 12-rebound game against Utah on Friday, a performance that’s starting to look typically impressive.

Kayla Pedersen - Stanford athletics

The junior from Arizona has been the Cardinal’s top scorer in three of five games and is averaging 18.6 points and 9.2 rebounds and is tied for the team-high with 13 3-pointers.

“Kayla is the difference for us, if you want to know,” Tara VanDerveer said. “She’s our leading scorer, she’s on the glass, fighting Jayne and Nneka for rebounds, she’s playing the most minutes for us, she stays out of foul trouble. She’s a huge key to our team.”

Pedersen showed up at Stanford poised, hard-working, and low-maintenance. VanDerveer turned Pedersen into a wing player because she knew Pedersen would put in the work to make the change.

The fact that the Cardinal have gone to the Final Four in each of the first two years of her college career might seem like her good fortune, but it’s really Stanford’s.

VanDerveer said her assistant coaches have accused her of taking Pedersen for granted.

“No, I don’t,” VanDerveer said. “I appreciate what she does for our team. She’s a facilitator. She makes everyone around her look good.”…

BEST OF THE WEST: Sunday’s meeting between second-ranked Stanford and Gonzaga is the first-ever meeting between the two programs and let’s hope it turns into a continuing series, one that could shine a very positive light on West Coast women’s basketball.

It will be the Zags third game against a Pac-10 team in 11 games. Gonzaga has already beaten USC and Washington…

USC’S BIG WIN: USC became the first Pac-10 team other than Stanford to beat a ranked team, upending No. 13 Texas at the Paradise Jam in the Virgin Islands. The Women of Troy have shown flashes of the kind of the team they could be, one that could wreak a more than a little havoc on the Pac-10 standings once the conference season begins…

AZTECS LEARN THE HARD WAY: The Paradise Jam tournament has been a rough-go for San Diego State, the Aztecs learning how much more they need to grow. SDSU gave No. 5 Notre Dame a great game, pulling to within two points before falling 84-79 in its first game and then fell hard against No. 20 Oklahoma on Friday, losing 87-48…

GAUCHOS NEED A WIN: UC Santa Barbara takes on San Diego on Sunday, still looking for its first win. The Gauchos are 0-4 for the first time since 2005-06 and have lost three consecutive games by double-digit margins for the first since 1989-90.

The offense would appear to be the biggest problem. UCSB is averaging just 53.2 points a game and is 7 of 54 from beyond the 3-point arc as a team…

CAL’S BOUNCE-BACK: Cal waited all week for its bounce-back after the 20-point loss to Baylor. It should come Saturday morning against Southern at the Buckeye Classic and that should earn the Bears a Sunday date against No. 3 Ohio State, another barometer game.

Despite six freshmen in the lineup, it’s a little hard to see the Bears as a young team with three seniors in the backcourt – all of whom have been in the starting lineup since their own freshmen seasons.

These three players – Alexis Gray-Lawson, Lauren Greif and Natasha Vital – need to give their team more than their joint 5-for-22 effort against Baylor to propel their team forward….

DUCKS LIGHT UP SCOREBOARD: It will be interesting to see what happens when Oregon actually plays somebody. The Ducks put up 117 points in defeating Cal State Fullerton. The 117 points were the second-highest total in school history.

From the Oregon notebook. The last time Oregon won four in a row as Nov. 25-Dec. 14, 2006 – a five-game win streak…Oregon has not started 4-0 since the 2004-05 season when they started 7-0 and went to the NCAA Tournament.

“Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity…. It turns problems into gifts, failures into success, the unexpected into perfect timing, and mistakes into important events. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today and creates a vision for tomorrow.” – Melodie Beattie

UCLA coach Nikki Caldwell is bringing her Bruins to Knoxville to take on No. 6 Tennessee. Caldwell is one of the brightest young coaches in the game and she learned from the master, Pat Summitt. Read about it at Fanhouse.com

http://ncaabasketball.fanhouse.com/2009/11/25/ucla-coach-caldwell-heads-home-to-knoxville-to-meet-her-mentor/

The No. 2-ranked Stanford Cardinal have plenty of post talent. What they don’t have, at the moment, is post depth.

A foot injury to freshman Joslyn Tinkle, a sprained ankle to reserve Ashley Cimino and the likely redshirt of Sarah Boothe have meant more minutes and less foul trouble for Jayne Appel, Nneka Ogwumike and Kayla Pedersen in the early days of the season. All three players lead the team in minutes play through the first four games of the season.

Nneka Ogwumike - Stanford athletics

It also might mean a three-guard lineup for the Cardinal at times.

At Stanford opens a five-game homestretch that will likely define the season – a slate of games that includes this weekend’s games against Utah and Gonzaga followed by DePaul, Duke and Tennessee – all possibilities are on the table.

Cardinal coach Tara VanDerveer said today that Cimino’s ankle has improved, even hinted that Boothe is making rapid improvement.

“It scares me a little bit, but Sarah Boothe is really close,” VanDerveer said. “I’m like ‘OK, wait, just slow down Sarah’.”

Tinkle, however, doesn’t appear to be returning any time soon.

“I really don’t know the timing of it,” VanDerveer said. “It’s all in what shows in the bone scan or MRI. Two things are going on in her foot. There are two hotspots that are showing up. One might be an old injury and one might be where she got stepped on. So it’s two-to-four-to-six-to-eight weeks. That’s what I’ve been told.”
The coach said it’s realistic to expect that Tinkle might not be back until the conference season starts in January.
“There’s a possibility that she could be playing after finals, which would be a nice Christmas present, for her to be able to play in the DePaul, Duke, Tennessee, UConn games, that stretch,” VanDerveer said. “The other possibility would be to rest it even more, and why push it then, and get her back for after Christmas. That’s probably more realistic.”

In the meantime, Stanford will adjust.

While Pedersen has been getting comfortable out on the wing – and currently stands as Stanford’s leading scorer – she will likely have to come back to the paint from time to time.

Ogwumike, who picked up two quick fouls against UC Davis and was limited to 23 minutes, will have to avoid early exits.

Appel, meanwhile, is still coming back from her offseason knee surgery, but thinks that increased minutes may just hasten her efforts to get back to the condition she was in at the end of last season.

“We are playing smarter, taking responsibility, making sure we stay out of foul trouble,” Appel said. “It’s a matter of whatever our team needs right now.”

VanDerveer said she will not push Appel’s recovery, which is moving along at a steady pace.

“I’m definitely not trying to play her more to get her in better shape,” VanDerveer said. “At the same time, I’m not feeling like we have to take her out to rest her. She pushes herself through situations.”

VanDerveer said her team is prepared to play three guards and to get more minutes from players like Cimino, Michelle Harrison and freshman Mikaela Ruef.

“What I’m seeing right now is, because we’re playing a schedule that is so tough, people are hanging on your words, they’re working really hard in practice,” VanDerveer said. “There is no sense of complacency. They look at the schedule, they look at the schedule and know they need to get after it, and they are.”