 |
| Players celebrate as they head to the locker room after the win. (Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle) |
The result was quite similar on March 23 when 2-seeded
Stanford hosted 15-seeded UCD for a first-round game of the NCAA tournament and
won 79-54.
Stanford dominated from the start, taking the
opening tip and scoring 15 points before Davis got its first basket with 4:05 to go in the first quarter. Freshman guard Lacie Hull started the scoring parade with
a three.
By the time the game was over, the Cardinal had
swished 10 threes. In addition to Lacie’s one, there were three each from
senior forward Alanna Smith and sophomore guard Kiana Williams and one each
from junior guard Anna Wilson, sophomore forward Alyssa Jerome and freshman
guard Lexie Hull.
Alanna, Kiana and Lacie started the game along
with junior guard DiJonai Carrington and sophomore forward Maya Dodson.
Everyone
gets to play
All 12 available players got into the game, and only Kiana played 30 minutes.
Alanna led the scoring with 21 points in just 21
minutes. She got the third quarter going by scoring the team’s first nine
points.
Two of them came when she stole the ball and
streaked to the basket for a layup. That play merited a Play of the Game on the
video board.
 |
| Alanna goes for a layup. (Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle) |
According to Stanford Athletics, Alanna joined three
legends -- Maya Moore, Breanna Stewart and Elena Delle Donne -- as the only
players in the past 20 years with 1,600 points, 200 blocked shots and 150 made
3-pointers. All three have gone on to success in the WNBA.
Also in double figures were Kiana with 19 and
DiJonai with 12.
The Cardinal dominated the Aggies in nearly every category:
rebounds, 42-32; assists, 16-6; and steals, 11-5. The team had 12 turnovers to
Davis’s 14.
The only area where Davis was better was fouls,
14 to Stanford’s 20, resulting in 15 of 16 free throws to Stanford’s five of
nine.
Overall, Stanford shot 49.2 percent, Davis 29.1
percent.
The crowd of 3,456 naturally had a majority of
Stanford fans, but Davis had a quite a few, too, many of them coming on a
chartered bus.
Also in the crowd were some vocal fans for the
earlier Brigham Young-Auburn game, won by BYU 73-64.
 |
| Tempie scouts the Brigham Young-Auburn game. (Bob Drebin/ISIPhotos.com) |
During that game, head coach Tara VanDerveer was joined by assistant coaches Tempie Brown and Lindy La Rocque to scout Stanford’s potential next opponent.
Associate head coach Kate Paye was in the lower
stands with the players and, like Tara, joined them in going to the locker room
shortly before the end of the third quarter.
Seating was somewhat different for these two
games. Each band sat in the lower stands across from its team’s bench.
Therefore the Stanford band was in the stands
where players’ families usually sit, while the families sat behind the bench.
Stanford will meet BYU at 8 p.m. March
25. The game will be shown on ESPN2.
