The No. 9 Stanford women’s basketball team (10-2, 1-0 Pac-10) rang in 2011 in style, with a 78-45 victory over California in Berkeley on Sunday.
After busting Connecticut’s 90-game winning streak on Thursday, the Cardinal couldn’t afford a letdown game. It rolled out to a big lead early against the Golden Bears (8-4, 0-1) and never looked back.
Sunday’s game at Haas Pavilion was the Pac-10 opener for both teams, and the star of the show was a shutdown Stanford defense, which held the Golden Bears to 34.5-percent shooting and 27.3-percent from three-point range.
Offensively, five Cardinal players ended up with double-digit point totals, including 15 from senior guard Jeanette Pohlen, who had another stellar performance to help Stanford extend its win streak over the Bears to five in a row.
Junior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike followed Pohlen with 14 points and seven rebounds, but she was forced to leave the game with an injury to her right shoulder early in the second half.
Freshman guard Toni Kokenis, in only 17 minutes on the floor, was next in line with 12 points, including three three-pointers. Senior forward Kayla Pedersen and freshman forward Chiney Ogwumike each had 11 points, and the two combined to pull down 16 of Stanford’s 45 rebounds. Thanks to Pedersen and the Ogwumike sisters, the Cardinal dominated on the glass, as the 45-26 rebounding margin was Stanford’s second-largest of the season.
Highlights were harder to come by for the Golden Bears, who only had two players finish with double-digit point totals and shot a miserable 22 percent from the free-throw line. Centers Talia Caldwell and Rama N’dlaye both had 10 points, and Eliza Pierre and Layshia Clarendon each added six points.
The most glaring hole in the stat line was sophomore DeNesha Stallworth, who scored just two points. Stallworth, who was elected to the Pac-10 all-freshman team last season, has already had five double-doubles this season, and averaged 12.9 points per game last season.
Shutting down big scorers has been the Cardinal’s strength lately, as Stanford has reeled off four impressive wins in a row after dropping back-to-back games in mid-December. The centerpiece, of course, is the defeat of the No. 1 Huskies, where the Cardinal held superstar guard Maya Moore to 14 points on 5-for-15 shooting from the floor.
Another reason for the Cardinal’s great play as of late is the scoring surge of Pohlen, who is averaging 19.2 points per game since the start of December, including a career-high 31 points in the victory over Connecticut.
One bonus of having such a strong finish to 2010-and start to 2011-is that the Cardinal can expect to regain some lost ground in the rankings. The Cardinal had dropped to No. 9 in the country by last week’s Associated Press rankings, but thanks to the victory over No. 1 UConn and an 89-52 trouncing of No. 4 Xavier, the Cardinal will most likely move back into the top five today.
Stanford will return to the Farm this weekend, as the Cardinal hosts Arizona on Thursday night at 7 p.m. and Arizona State on Saturday at 2 p.m.