BERKELEY, Calif. — California had to grind one out, and coach Joanne Boyle hopes that’s a good thing heading into preparations for a showdown with rival Stanford next weekend.
“It was ugly. There was not a flow for either team offensively,” Boyle said. “It gives you something to focus on. It’s not like you come out and say, ‘You beat them by 100.’ I didn’t feel like we dominated from the beginning. We had to grind this game out.”
Ashley Walker scored 14 of her 20 points in the first half and pulled down 10 rebounds and No. 13 California won its fifth straight game with a lackluster 62-34 victory over Washington on Sunday.
Walker, the Pac-10 leading scorer who moved up to second place on the Cal career scoring list during Thursday’s 68-45 win over Washington State, shot 6-for-10 and gave everybody a scare when she took a hard fall going for an offensive rebound early in the second half. She left the game briefly but quickly returned.
Devanei Hampton added 10 points, eight rebounds and three steals and Lauren Greif grabbed eight boards for the Golden Bears (13-2, 4-0 Pac-10), who were far from sharp in shooting just 41 percent and committing 21 turnovers.
Now, Cal has all week to prepare for its first meeting of the season with 11th-ranked Stanford on Sunday at home in Haas Pavilion. Stanford (13-3, 4-0) is the eight-time defending regular-season conference champion and picked to win a ninth straight Pac-10 title, while Cal is expected to place second.
Hampton, the 2007 Pac-10 Player of the Year, is ready for a rematch with Stanford.
“I’ve lost 23½ pounds. I’m just trying to get back in the flow of everything, trying to give my team the defense we play collectively,” said Hampton, who was slowed starting the season following right knee surgery. “I was motivated and determined to come back. Yeah I gained a little weight but I have worked extra hard to get it off.”
Liz Lay scored 11 points to lead sloppy Washington (5-8, 1-2), which had to be happy to leave the Bay Area after a tough weekend that also included a record 77-point loss at No. 11 Stanford on Thursday night. The Huskies combined for 69 points in their two losses.
“When you take a loss you want to come out fired up and ready to play,” Walker said of Washington. “We knew that wasn’t the same Washington. We said, ‘We’re going to win this game defensively.”’
The Huskies committed 18 turnovers, were outrebounded 45-26 and fell behind big in a hurry and couldn’t recover. Washington went 7:30 between its first and second field goals in the opening half and trailed 32-9 at the break. It was the lowest scoring first half in school history, beating the 12 points the Huskies scored in the first half of a 77-42 loss at Stanford last season. They shot 3-for-24 and went 0-of-12 from 3-point range.
After the 112-35 loss to the Cardinal — the largest margin of defeat in Washington program and Pac-10 history and Stanford’s biggest winning margin ever — Huskies coach Tia Jackson went with a completely new starting lineup.
It featured four freshmen making their first career starts and a sophomore. This is a far cry from the Washington team that shocked then-No. 9 Cal 74-66 in Seattle last season to conclude the conference schedule, knocking the Bears out of a possible share of the Pac-10 title.
Jackson said she decided on the lineup switch over the past couple of days.
“I think all in all, you take away the first half when we could not make a basket, wide open 15-footers, like there was a lid on it, and the second half was a different game,” Jackson said. “Based on the last few practices, we want the best competitors on the floor. I wasn’t looking at classification at all.”
Washington’s Charmaine Barlow and Alexis Gray-Lawson hit heads in a collision at the 16:46 of the first half and both left the game with cuts and went to the locker room to be examined. Barlow needed six stitches to close a gash over her right eye and Gray-Lawson received three stitches above her left eye.
Washington, 0-4 against ranked opponents this season, committed five of its turnovers in the first 3:46 and began the game 2-for-13. The Huskies went from the 7:13 mark of the first half to 18:29 in the second between field goals.
“I think there’s some really good things that we did, in particular defense and rebounding,” Boyle said. “We have to be able to convert those things.”
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