SEATTLE – With a starting lineup that includes two freshmen and two sophomores, the University of Washington women’s basketball team has succumbed to youth at times this season.
It happened again Thursday night, although this time the damage was done by a youngster who wasn’t wearing a UW uniform.
Candice Wiggins, Stanford’s prized freshman, scored 10 of her 12 points during a 20-5 second-half run that helped the Cardinal pull away from the pesky Huskies en route to an 82-60 win.
“We’re obviously a better team when she’s out there playing well,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said of a freshman who entered the game averaging a team-high 17.4 points per game. “I thought she was pressing a little bit tonight. It was not one of her best games. But she’s very persistent, and she hit some big shots for us.”
Wiggins helped Stanford pull away after Washington had pulled into a 39-39 tie in the first two minutes of the second half. The Cardinal (18-2, 9-1 in the Pac-10) went on runs of 14-2 and 20-5 to put the game out of reach.
On a night when the UW (8-12, 4-6) stayed with the fourth-ranked team in the country for more than a half, the young Huskies couldn’t respond when it counted. Nor could undersized Washington match the Cardinal’s inside game.
Stanford’s 6-foot-3 center Brooke Smith scored a game-high 20 points and forced the UW’s Jill Bell into foul trouble. The Huskies had no answer for Smith, a Duke transfer who did all of her damage against a smaller Washington interior.
A trio of six-footers – Smith, T’Nae Thiel and Kristen Newlin, who combined for 33 points and 16 free-throw attempts – continued to dominate the smaller Huskies inside. Bell, one of only two 6-footers in the UW starting lineup, got her fourth foul with 11:04 remaining and fouled out less than six minutes later.
“They’re huge, and they just keep coming at you,” said Bell, who scored a team-high 14 points before fouling out with 5:36 remaining in the game. “They have big girls starting out, and big girls coming off the bench. We didn’t really have the size, and they did a good job of really kicking (the ball) inside.”
The Cardinal scored the first six points of the game and stormed out to a 16-8 lead while hitting six of their first eight shots. Sharp-shooting guard Kelley Suminski hit all three of her 3-point attempts during the spurt, and Smith added six points.
Facing an uphill climb, the Huskies slowly fought their way back over the next 10 minutes of play. UW finally caught up with 5:19 remaining in the first half, when Kristen O’Neill hit a 3-pointer from the top of the key to tie the score at 26.
“When I turned and saw it was tied, that gave the team confidence,” said O’Neill, a junior who played high school ball at Meadowdale. “Going into the game, we felt like we could play with them, even though they’re a very talented team. It’s just too bad we couldn’t put two good halves together.”
After O’Neill’s basket, Stanford heated up again. The Cardinal hit their final three shots to go into halftime with a 36-31 lead.
Washington opened the second half with back-to-back 3-pointers to take its first – and only – lead at 37-36.
From there, Washington succumbed to a lack of size, foul trouble and defensive breakdowns. Stanford eventually tied the score at 39, then scored 14 of the next 16 points en route to a 53-41 lead. Breanne Watson’s turnaround shot for UW temporarily slowed down the Cardinal, who responded with another 6-1 run that was capped by Wiggins’s 3-pointer.
With 11:44 remaining in the game, Stanford had turned a tie score into a 59-44 advantage.
“I like the fact that we were hanging with them,” Washington coach June Daugherty said. “But we had some defensive breakdowns. And with a team like this, if you make a mistake, they really make you pay.”
Kayla Burt, an Arlington High grad, hit a 3-pointer with 9:14 remaining that pulled the Huskies to within 63-52, but they never got closer than that.
“They’re the (No. 4) team in the country, and we were playing with them until they went on their run,” the UW’s Bell said. “I know we’re a better team than we showed tonight, and I just want to pull it through for the rest of the Pac-10 season.”
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