Stanford outscores ASU 46-19 after break

When they scored triple-digit points at Oregon last Saturday, it seemed like the Cardinal

women were ready to put their recent string of underwhelming performances behind them and play more like the nation’s No. 2 team. They did exactly that on Thursday with a 71-48 win over Arizona State, but only for the game’s final 20 minutes.

“My dad had a saying that it’s not the start but the finish and we started as poorly as we have started any game that I can ever honestly remember coaching,” said Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer. “We were just not understanding what Arizona State was going to do. When they came out they were very aggressive, they got in passing lanes, we turned it over, we were totally discombobulated offensively . . . and then we had to make a couple of adjustments and run some different little things and obviously the second half was a whole different story.”

For the Cardinal (18-1, 8-0 Pac-10), it really was a tale of two halves. After falling far behind the Sun Devils (12-7, 4-4) in the first period — by as many as 14 points — Stanford was able to bounce back, outscoring Arizona State 46-19 in a dominant second half. Junior forward Kayla Pedersen led both teams with 23 points, while redshirt senior guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude had a career-high 19 points. Senior center Jayne Appel continued her recent offensive resurgence, earning a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds.

The game began slowly for both teams, with each side racking up only four points after nearly four and half minutes. A Gold-Onwude layup made it 6-4 at 15:44, marking the last lead that Stanford would hold during the half.

The Sun Devils took off on a 13-2 run over the next five minutes, quickly putting up a 17-8 lead by taking advantage of the Cardinal’s missteps in transition and their inability to recover the ball after shooting. A three-pointer by redshirt junior guard J.J. Hones with 9:33 remaining would make it 17-11 and bring the crowd back into the game — but only for a moment, as Arizona State wasn’t about to let up.

With seven minutes left in the first half, the statistics revealed just how much Stanford was struggling. The Sun Devils had outshot them 25 to 14, out-rebounded them 14 to nine, and had forced six turnovers while giving up only one. A few moments later, the score was 27-13. Junior guard Tenaya Watson accounted for most of the damage, scoring all of her 12 points during the first half.

With time winding down in the frame, however, Stanford began to climb back. The Cardinal went on a 12-2 run to pull within 29-25 at halftime, capped by a Gold-Onwude layup. Despite the resurgence, it was the first time this season that the Cardinal have been losing when it went to the locker room.

“I think it was a moment where everybody looked each other in the eye and was like ‘Alright, we’re down 15, it’s going to be a stop at a time,’” Gold-Onwude said. “‘It’s [going to] be one good offensive set at a time. We have to come to the ball — don’t leave your point guard alone.’”

The Cardinal did not let up after halftime, with Gold-Onwude quickly tying the game at 30 with an impressive basket from behind the arc. A moment later, Hones sent a laser of a pass down to Pedersen in the paint, who electrified the crowd with a go-ahead layup.

From there, Stanford did not look back. The Cardinal offense came to life, quickly pulling ahead with a 23-3 run to make the score 48-32 with 12:13 remaining. Pedersen accounted for 10 of Stanford’s points during the run, while Gold-Onwude added six of her own with a pair of three-pointers.

By the end of the second half, Stanford had “rebounded” — literally — in nearly every statistical area in which it had been struggling. On the game as a whole, the Cardinal took 53 shots (just two less than ASU’s 55), outrebounded the Sun Devils 40 to 31 (with 13 of the Cardinal’s 16 offensive boards coming in the second half), and had given up 14 turnovers, only one more than its opponents. Perhaps most impressively, the Cardinal was deadly accurate, shooting 54.8 percent in the second half compared to the Sun Devils’ 22.7 percent.

After a 100-80 win at Oregon last Saturday and a thrilling come-from-behind victory last night, the Cardinal women are starting to gain more confidence about how they are playing.

“I’m really just proud of how, you know, again we’re down and nothing is going well. [Sophomore forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike is] in foul trouble, we’re turning the ball over, their really low percentage shooters are scoring,” VanDerveer said. “So we had to make some adjustments and people had to say, ‘All right, we’ve got to go to plan B, and people did really well.’”

For Appel, the reigning Pac-10 Player of the Year, the feeling is the same.

“We’re having fun on the court, just really playing with each other and playing basketball. Hopefully that just continues to go with each game, as we get closer to the end of the Pac-10.”

The Cardinal will look to maintain its momentum tomorrow night as it closes the first half of the conference season against Arizona (9-9, 3-5), who lost to Cal 73-53 last night. The game is set for 2 p.m. at Maples Pavilion.