It was no secret that Stanford women’s basketball had been playing well heading into Saturday’s matchup with Arizona State. The No. 4 Cardinal (12-2, 3-0 Pac-10) turned heads across the nation with its 12-point upset of national-champion Connecticut, and then kicked off the conference season with convincing victories over California and Arizona. But no one was expecting Stanford to blow away the Sun Devils quite the way it did.
Stanford left Arizona State (10-4, 2-2) looking for answers following an 82-35 rout on Saturday afternoon, posting its sixth win in a row while putting ASU into a two-game skid, the team’s first losing streak of the season. Senior guard Jeanette Pohlen led the explosive Cardinal offense with 7-for-10 shooting and 18 points, while junior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike added 16 of her own, along with eight rebounds.
“Arizona State is an excellent team. Our team knew that. I thought we just had to come out and jump right on them, and we did,” said Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer.
Stanford certainly wasted no time getting out in front. The Cardinal worked a tough player-to-player defense from the outset, holding the Sun Devils to low-percentage shots while working aggressively to the hoop on the other end. Nnemkadi Ogwumike drove hard to the basket like she did in her 24-point effort against Arizona two days earlier, putting up a pair of layups in the first two minutes. Pohlen added an uncontested three-pointer from the wing to put the Card up 9-0, forcing an early timeout from ASU head coach Charli Turner Thorne.
Stanford didn’t let up from there. Barely eight minutes into the game, the Sun Devils found themselves facing an 18-3 deficit.
Thorne responded by subbing out all five players a few minutes later, and the rapid change in individual matchups helped boost the Sun Devils to a short 7-2 run to pull within 20-10.
But with Pohlen driving harder to the hoop and Nnemkadi Ogwumike making a few trips to the free-throw line, the Cardinal was able to maintain distance. Stanford went on a 13-0 run of its own to bring the score to 33-10 before heading to the locker room with a 42-14 lead.
At the half, the Cardinal had been shooting 18-for-28 while holding ASU to just 5-for-25. Nnemkadi Ogwumike was already 7-for-11 all on her own, highlighted by a look-easy steal just outside the ASU key and a smooth run in for a layup. Pohlen helped send Stanford to the half with a bang as well, notching a nothing-but-net three-pointer from a full step beyond the arc in the final seconds.
“We just were focusing on what [ASU] was giving us,” Ogwumike said about her team’s offense on Saturday. “Just making smart plays. And I think people were just ready to go from the start. We weren’t going to have any letdowns.”
Pohlen and Nnemkadi Ogwumike may have provided plenty of firepower, but as Stanford continued to snuff out the brief offensive sparks from ASU in the second half, it became clear that the Cardinal was also locked in on defense.
Perhaps most impressive was junior guard Lindy La Rocque, who all but shut down ASU’s Dymond Simon. The Sun Devil guard had averaged over 14 points per game on the season, but La Rocque held her to a single three-pointer in all the time she was defending her. Simon finished the game with seven points.
“Lindy did a great job,” VanDerveer said. “I love how people like [recent graduate Rosalyn Gold-Onwude] stepped up like that on defense, and got in the game because of her defense. I think Chiney [Ogwumike] and Lindy and other people are really understanding that’s what they’re going to do, too.”
The Cardinal bench played a bigger role as the game wore on, but the general trend was still the same. Stanford may have hit a stumbling block when it lost to DePaul and Tennessee last month, but Saturday was all Cardinal.
Stanford will hit the road next weekend, facing Washington at 7 p.m. on Friday in Seattle and Washington State at 1 p.m. on Sunday in Pullman.