Stanford Gets the Win After Being Off for Two Weeks

By Joe Lami

Follow me on twitter:@joe_lami

On Saturday night the Stanford Cardinal came off a two-week break as they hosted the Pacific Tigers. Pacific showed a strong defense in the first half forcing seven Stanford turnovers. However, the Cardinal prevailed by the final score of 78-43.

The Cardinal were led by Chiney Ogwumike who had 31 points, breaking her previous career high of 27. A strong showing from Mikaela Ruef as she had her career high in rebounds and assists. 13 rebounds for the redshirt junior breaking her previous career high of 12 that she set November 16th against Baylor in Hawi’i. Ruef also had 5 assists to set a career high. Joslyn Tinkle finished the night with ten points and Toni Kokenis had eight in the win.

The Pacific Tigers were led by junior guard Gena Johnson with 13. She averages 10.8 so she was just above her average against the number one team in the nation. She is a very athletic player and found a way to finish plays she had no intention of making. The most notable being an up and under going beneath Mikaela Ruef to get the bucket and the foul. Pacific was no slouch coming into this game as they were, 7-1 with the only loss of the season coming last week in Gainesville against Florida. After seeing both UC Davis and Pacific, the Big West is going to be a good conference this year. Both teams played Stanford very well in the first half and have extremely good defenses. However, they couldn’t keep up with Stanford well into the second half and that’s where Stanford will pull away.

Saturday’s win marks the fifth time in school history that Stanford starts the season with a 9-0 record and they extend their home winning streak to 82 games to next be challenged by UConn.

Stanford has the toughest challenge in front of them traveling to play two top 25 teams this week, both teams in the SEC, and arguably the two best teams in the SEC in #18 South Carolina and #12 Tennessee, before returning home to play #2 Connecticut. That will end the non-conference schedule for the Cardinal, as January 4th they start their Pac-12 play against Colorado and Utah. They then travel across the bay January 8th to take on #9 rival California.