Completing a road sweep of the newly-added Pac-12 schools, the Stanford women’s basketball team comfortably defeated Colorado 80-54 last Saturday in Boulder.

The No. 4 Cardinal (15-1, 6-0 Pac-12) started relatively slow against the Lady Buffaloes (13-3, 2-3 Pac-12), and though Stanford began the game with a nine-point run, Colorado fought back to within four midway through the first half. However, that was the closest the Lady Buffs would get, and by the break the Card led 32-15. Stanford then returned for the second period with an 11-3 run that all but killed the contest even though there was still 16:56 remaining.

Four of Stanford’s starters—senior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike, her sister sophomore forward Chiney, junior forward Joslyn Tinkle and sophomore guard Toni Kokenis—reached double-figure point totals, led by Tinkle who tied her career record of 20. The shooting performance of these players was in high contrast to the struggles against Utah in Salt Lake City and also to the rest of the team. The overall field-goal percentage only increased a small amount from the 43.3 percent against the Utes to 50 percent in this game, but considering just these four starters, the jump was substantial. In Utah the shooting accuracy was roughly the same across the team, but in Colorado these four hit 66.7 percent compared to just 15.8 percent from the other players.

In contrast, though Colorado shared the scoring responsibility much more equally, its starters only managed a combined 18 points between them. Critically this included the Lady Buffs’ two statistically best players, junior guard Chucky Jeffery and freshman guard Lexy Kresl. They came into the contest averaging 17.2 and 10.8 points per game and left with just two and three points, respectively, as each shot 1-for-10.

The fact that these two players were kept quiet and that the game was almost seven minutes old before Colorado scored its first points clearly demonstrates the good defensive performance made by Stanford. The Lady Buffs’ top two performers were freshman forward Jen Reese and sophomore guard Brittany Wilson with 10 points each. However, only two of Wilson’s baskets came before Stanford had already scored enough points to win the game outright. When the Card began to lower its guard and play deeper from the bench, Reese hit her first the basket with just 10 minutes remaining.

Apart from the shooting accuracy of her bench, the biggest concern in this game for Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer may have been the health of Nnemkadi Ogwumike. At the four-minute mark she went down in a scramble for the ball under the basket and hurt her right ankle. The injury kept her out of the first half for over five minutes, but with the ankle taped up, she went on to post an important 19 points from her 26 minutes on court.

In Nnemkadi Ogwumike’s temporary absence, Tinkle stepped up and made a key contribution to the Card’s victory. In contrast to the pre-Christmas rout of Cal State Bakersfield at Maples, where Tinkle set a career high of 20 points, this was a Pac-12 conference game with a lot more at stake. In that contest VanDerveer was happy to rest her usual starters, which was not the case on Saturday, when both the Ogwumike sisters and Kokenis spent substantial time on the hardwood. In Tinkle’s second-straight start, she made a good case for more by opening the scoring, downing her first four shots and making no mistakes from the charity stripe.

In the face of some of the struggles during the road trip, Tinkle’s performance will have come as some comfort to VanDerveer, who will not want to have to rely purely on her National Player of the Year contender Nnemkadi Ogwumike to capture the inaugural Pac-12 title.

Stanford returns to campus this week to face Washington State on Thursday followed by Washington on Saturday at Maples Pavilion.