SEATTLE – With Stanford All-American Candice Wiggins sporting a boot on her right foot after spraining her ankle, Cardinal freshman Jayne Appel carried the star guard on her back to and from the postgame interview room at Hec Edmundson Pavilion following her team’s rout of Washington.
It wasn’t the only time Appel carried her team Thursday.
Appel scored 15 of her 19 points in the final 4:38 of the first half, dominating Washington inside and leading the No. 10 Cardinal to a 77-56 victory over the Huskies.
The loss was the second in a row for the Huskies (5-2 Pacific-10, 12-6 overall) after a nine-game winning streak, and broke an 11-game home win streak for the UW. The win for Stanford (13-3), which leads the Pac-10 at 6-0, avenged a 77-72 loss to Washington at Hec Ed last season. Stanford has won the past two meetings between the teams by an average of 26 points and were clearly motivated by the loss a year ago.
“This is a huge win,” said Wiggins, who had 17 points, 10 rebounds, four assists and four steals. “This definitely was one of the days that was marked on our calendar because we felt like we wanted that opportunity back. We weren’t pleased at all with the loss last year. … That really motivated us.”
Though Stanford is loaded with talent, including two-time Pac-10 Player of the Year Wiggins and All-American Brooke Smith, it was Appel, a 6-foot-4 forward from Pleasant Hill, Calif., who was the standout. And that really wasn’t a big surprise.
Appel was the MVP of last year’s McDonald’s All-American game and came into the contest as Stanford’s top reserve, ranking third in scoring (12.0) and rebounding (6.0) and leading the team with 27 blocks. Thursday she shot 9-for-14 and added eight rebounds and two blocked shots. It was her sixth-straight game scoring in double figures. But her night didn’t start out well, as she missed her first shot and committed a foul just seconds into checking in.
“She came back with a vengeance,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. “There’s not much you can do about it. When she gets that ball, she finishes really well.”
Appel’s effort led a dominant inside game by Stanford, which outscored Washington 50-22 in the paint. Stanford out-rebounded the Huskies 51-43.
“They’re big inside, they’re strong (and) we weren’t physical enough,” Washington forward Breanne Watson said. “That was it. We just weren’t physical enough and we were giving them everything they wanted and they did a great job, they converted all their shots.”
“We got overwhelmed inside,” Washington coach June Daugherty said. “We didn’t help our post players enough. …They’re just so big and tonight their front line was really, really on.”
Washington did not help itself, shooting a season-low 27.8 percent and scoring a season-low in points.
That Washington was as close as it was for so long was surprising. The Huskies missed 19 of their first 23 shots, but fortunately for Washington, Stanford wasn’t faring much better. The Cardinal led by 11 after a Wiggins 3-pointer with six minutes to go in the first half, but the UW closed the gap to 26-21 on a Laura McLellan jump shot. At that point, Appel took over, scoring 13 of her points in a 15-6 Stanford run over the final four minutes that gave the Cardinal a 41-28 halftime lead.
Stanford put the game away quickly after halftime, scoring the first 10 points as Washington missed its first eight second-half shots, giving the Cardinal a 51-28 lead.
Brooke Smith had 12 points, nine rebounds and six assists for the Cardinal, which has won 11 in a row.
Freshman Sami Whitcomb had a career-high 13 points and Cameo Hicks added 11 for Washington, which hosts No. 22 California at 1 p.m. Saturday.
“It was hard to stop them,” Hicks said. “You try to limit their shots on the outside, limit Wiggins’ touches, and they dump it off inside. …You try to stop inside, they go outside. (They’re a) great team, elite.”
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