Stanford women advance to face Oregon St. in Pac-12 final

“It’s super satisfying”, Erica McCall said. “It’s like tasting your favorite candy”.

Oregon State’s bid for a second straight Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament title was not to be on Sunday night as the Cardinal used a stifling defense to pull out a 48-43 win at KeyArena.

OR dispatched Arizona in the opening round to end an eight-game losing streak in the conference tournament and notched its fourth victory over a ranked opponent this season with a 70-69 upset of No. 11 Washington in the quarterfinals. This crown came thanks to a comeback that relied heavily on a stifling defensive performance and a huge lift off the bench from Smith. Arizona will be the 2-seed, meaning that it will likely have to beat both UCLA and OR on Friday and Saturday to win the tournament title.

Canada led UCLA (23-8) with 27 points, but had 17 in the first half and didn’t get enough help from others. “They get up and down and make things happen so we don’t want to play at their pace”.

“Our team is going to have to have a chip on its shoulder and bring it”, VanDerveer said. “We’re a type of team that when we think too much about our goal we get a little tight and constricted”.

“We didn’t shoot very well and we didn’t defend very well, and when you do that it’s hard to win basketball games”, Oregon State coach Wayne Tinkle said. “And let’s face it, Pac-12 play is going to prepare us better than any conference will prepare any team”. Sabrina Ionescu scored 5 points in the quarter, but finished the first half with only 1 assist, and the Ducks ended the half on a 2-11 shooting skid.

Nine of Oregon’s losses this season were to ranked teams, including three to Stanford and two to Oregon State. Cazorla made 2 three pointers to keep the game respectable, but the Cardinal kept a 53-47 advantage into the fourth quarter. Samuelson eventually iced the game at the free-throw line.

Brooks opened the game with a dunk, but Oregon State pulled out to a 9-8 lead on Eubanks’ dunk.

“We had a really good start, we came out really strong”, said senior Kolbie Orum. Following last year’s run to the Elite Eight in the NCAA Tournament, the Ducks were picked to finish first in the preseason conference poll. OSU tied for second place with Utah at the Pac-12 championships past year, where the UW finished seventh.

“Nothing surprised me, to be honest”.

The old cliche about throwing the records out the window for rivalry games might need to be applied Saturday as No. 6 Oregon visits Oregon State for the 348th Civil War.

The Pacific-12 Conference – better known as the PAC-12 – will host the 2017 conference tournament this week with the Oregon Ducks enjoying the top seed. The loss shouldn’t penalize the Beavers when it comes to NCAA seeding, but any outside hope of landing a No. 1 seed is likely gone. They needed a win over Stanford in the Pac-12 title game and a loss by SC in the SEC finale. As many as five teams could make the NCAA Tournament.

With a foul to give, OR fouled Plum to burn more than two seconds off the clock and Plum’s second attempt to win the game off the inbounds was short when Hebard managed to get a hand on it, sending the Ducks into a raucous celebration after perhaps their biggest win in more than a decade.