Cardinal crushes Arizona after halftime

For the second time in as many games, it only took one half of dominant play for the No. 2 Cardinal to secure a convincing win.

After a competitive opening against Arizona on Saturday afternoon, Stanford (19-1, 9-0 Pac-10) took off in the second half en route to an 83-62 victory over the visiting Wildcats (9-10, 3-6). Sophomore forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike and junior forward Kayla Pedersen each put up 27 points for Stanford, while Arizona guard Davellyn White added 24 of her own.

Stanford found itself trailing early, as it did against Arizona State two nights earlier. White opened the game with a three-pointer and just a minute later, the Cardinal was down 7-3. Stanford would respond, though, racing to a 10-9 lead on an Ogwumike layup at 15:51 and setting the pace for a hard-fought first half.

After any lead the Cardinal took, the Wildcats seemed able to close the gap a moment later, thanks in large part to 57.1-percent shooting in the first half. The game was tied six separate times in the first 20 minutes and there were six lead changes.

“Arizona has really talented players and they came out and ran their offense really well in the first half,” said Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer. “They shot [really well] and our defense was not aggressive enough.”

Stanford set the pace for most of the game, but it had little to do with solid shooting. The Cardinal posted a modest 35-percent field goal percentage in the first half, but it outshot the Wildcats 40 to 28 from the field in the first half thanks to 27 rebounds, including 14 on offense — an area where the Cardinal had been struggling lately.

In particular, the Cardinal had trouble shooting from beyond the arc. Despite a quick trio of three-pointers from Kayla Pedersen in the first eight minutes, Stanford was just 5-22 on threes in the first half and 8-35 on the game as a whole. Guards Jeanette Pohlen and Rosalyn Gold-Onwude were 1-10 and 0-7 from outside the line, respectively.

“Our perimeter shot wasn’t there,” VanDerveer said. “I just think for people in the long run, we can’t be going one-for-10 or one-for-four from the perimeter. We can’t be doing that and expect to win games. We need people being more patient and going inside.”

As the first half wound down, freshman forward Joslyn Tinkle electrified the crowd with a game-tying layup, but White quickly responded with an impressive jump shot to put the Wildcats up 42-40 at the half. For the second time in its last two games — and just the second time this season — the Cardinal women were behind as they headed for the locker room.

“We needed to light the fire,” Ogwumike said. “We didn’t necessarily start as aggressively as we needed to, or aggressively at all, and we needed to come out [in the second half] and let everybody know, and let ourselves know, that no one can pound on us, we’re supposed to be pounding on other people. We just really needed to play Stanford ball.”

If aggression was its goal for the second half, the team succeeded from the outset. Stanford immediately went on a 10-0 run, jumping out to a 50-42 lead in just four and a half minutes. Ogwumike accounted for eight points during the outburst.

Arizona, meanwhile, missed eight consecutive shots and struggled badly on rebounds. They brought down only eight in the half while allowing 25 to Stanford, who finished with 52 (26 offensive, 26 defensive) compared to Arizona’s total of 22.

The Cardinal began to utilize its dominant size, with power forwards Ogwumike and Pedersen scoring the majority of their points in the second half. With 5:44 to go, sophomore guard Lindy La Rocque gave the Cardinal its first lead of over 20 points, nailing a three-pointer to make it 71-50. The Wildcats would manage to pull within 19 on White’s three a few minutes later before ultimately falling, 83-62.

With half of the conference season now behind them, the Cardinal women find themselves with a somewhat unusual problem — in three of their last four games, they’ve only played like the No. 2 team in the country in the second half. They led Oregon State by a slim margin of 29-27 at halftime two weekends ago and trailed Arizona State last Thursday, 29-25, after 20 minutes.

“I think it just has to do with the intensity that we come out with,” Ogwumike said. “We’re playing as hard as we can, but there’s still room for us to play harder . . . I think we can’t just wait for a team that we know has some extreme type [of play style] and just wait to play hard then. We need to start off every game like it’s any team, any team that could potentially beat us. We just need to get that into our heads and try to get them down in the first half.”

The Cardinal will kick off the second half of its conference season this Thursday, hosting UCLA at 7 p.m.