Turkey, chicken and beef. All three were part of a good Thanksgiving weekend for the No. 3 Stanford women’s basketball team. The Cardinal polished off South Carolina 70-32 on Friday night, then topped Texas 93- 78 on Sunday afternoon, stretching the team’s record to a perfect 5-0.

In Friday’s contest with the Gamecocks (2-4), the Cardinal revved up early and dominated the entire game. The Cardinal stormed out to a 35-11 lead by halftime, and cruised in the second half to the 38-point victory, the largest margin of victory for the Cardinal so far this season.

Senior guard Jeannette Pohlen led the way against South Carolina, with 14 points on four three-pointers. All five Cardinal starters finished with at least nine points; senior forward Kayla Pedersen finished with 11 points, and forwards Nnemkadi Ogwumike and Joslyn Tinkle each had ten points.

When all was said and done, the Cardinal had captured its first truly dominant victory of the year. In the two games prior to Stanford’s romp of the Gamecocks, the Card had squeaked out a nine-point victory over Utah and a six-point victory over Gonzaga.

Both of the uncharacteristically close games fell on Stanford’s first road trip of the season, and the Cardinal came back to Maples looking to play a dominant game—a game that had eluded the team until Friday.

“We’re still trying to find our identity,” Pohlen said. “We have a lot of really athletic players who can contribute offensively and defensively. We’re trying to put it all together.”

The Cardinal’s huge margin of victory wasn’t due to massive scoring from the offense, but instead a stingy defense that held South Carolina to a meager 21.8 percent shooting from the floor, including a stretch of almost ten minutes where the Gamecocks failed to score a single point.

Stanford brought that power into Sunday’s game against the Longhorns, but Texas gave the Card all they had before fading down the stretch.

The game started in an unusually auspicious fashion for the Cardinal when the Texas coaching staff failed to turn in the starting lineups before tipoff, leading to a technical foul on the Horns. The technical sent Pedersen to the free throw line, where she drained both shots to give Stanford a 2-0 lead—before the game had even started.

When the game got underway, Texas came out firing, draining three consecutive three-pointers while jumping out to a 9-6 lead just four minutes into the game. Stanford responded with a 28-9 run over the next 11 minutes to grab a 34-18 lead after freshman guard Toni Kokenis knocked down a three following a Pedersen steal.

Stanford stretched the lead to as high as 18 points in the first half thanks to huge contributions off the bench from Kokenis, who had seven points in the first period of play, and junior forward Sarah Boothe, who added eight points early on.

But even after Boothe made a jumper to push the lead to 18 with 2:50 to go in the first half, the Longhorns refused to quit. An aggressive full-court press from the Horns led to three Stanford turnovers, while Texas guards Ashleigh Fontenette and Chassidy Fussell scored five points apiece in the last two minutes and thirty seconds of the half to cut Stanford’s lead to 49-39 at the break.

In the second half, the Longhorns continued their aggressive play, cutting the Stanford lead to six points just two minutes into the final period, and causing both Nnemkadi Ogwumike and Pedersen to pick up their third personal fouls with over 17 minutes remaining in the game.

Luckily for the Cardinal, the cream rose to the top when the team needed it most. After the Longhorns got within striking distance, Stanford’s “Big Three”—Pedersen, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, and Pohlen—put the team on their backs.

In the next 14 minutes of the game, the “Big Three” scored 28 of the 38 points that stretched the Stanford lead to 23, allowing the Cardinal to cruise to the 93-78 final.

When the final buzzer sounded, Nnemkadi Ogwumike had 22 points, Pedersen had 19 points (and 12 rebounds), and Chiney Ogwumike and Boothe each had 14 points. Kokenis and Pohlen had 8 points each, and Pohlen added six assists to lead the team.

After a tough, physical game in which four players had three or more fouls, head coach Tara VanDerveer praised her team for rising to the occasion, and complimented Kokenis’ play.

“I think the story for me today was Toni…her speed and quickness helped her get into the things that we wanted to do,” VanDerveer said. “You saw some mistakes between Toni and Chiney [Ogwumike], but we need [Toni’s] speed, we need her quickness and we need her defense.”

VanDerveer even invoked the name of Stanford’s biggest star in her commendation of the freshman.

“With Andrew Luck, as great of a player as he is, he redshirted his freshman year,” VanDerveer said. “We’re throwing Toni right in there, and today she had to be out there on her own and she really stepped up.”

VanDerveer also said that her team is closer to finding the identity it has been searching for, and her star players echoed those sentiments.

“After these last two games, I would say that we definitely are closer, but not closer to the end, so to speak,” said Nnemkadi Ogwumike. “We’re focusing on doing the little things right.”

Boothe noted that the collective team effort, combined with a sense of trust amongst the players, was instrumental in the Cardinal hitting its stride.

“Now we have faith in each other that whoever’s on the court, we can get the job done,” she said. “Even if [the Big Three] just need a break, you know you have someone on the bench…who can get the job done.”

“Honestly, we have seven starters,” VanDerveer agreed. “Toni and Sarah, in my mind, are starters for us.”

With final exams looming, Stanford won’t play again until Dec. 12, when the Cardinal will square off with Fresno State in Maples Pavilion.

Vanderveer, who needs just two more victories to reach 800 career wins, was hardly enthused with the interim between games, but conceded, “I have no choice, so I like [the break].”

Pedersen, however, had a brighter outlook on what the upcoming couple of weeks will mean for the team: another opportunity to improve.

“We’re going to look at those two weeks of practice and see what ways can we get better,” she said. “We’re hungry to practice, we’re hungry to push each other, we’re hungry to get better.”