The No. 8 Arizona Wildcats played one of their better games of the season, but it wasn’t enough to overcome the defending champion Stanford Cardinal.
The title game rematch lived up to the hype but it ultimately went in favor of the second-ranked Cardinal 75-69 on Sunday.
These numbers explain why the Wildcats couldn’t get past Stanford in Palo Alto.
25 — The Wildcats could not stop Stanford forward Cameron Brink, who scored a career-high 25 points and added 15 rebounds. Fifteen of her points came in the second half.
It didn’t help Arizona that forwards Koi Love and Cate Reese got into foul trouble, forcing UA coach Adia Barnes to utilize more of her bench.
13-2 — There were many points throughout when Stanford looked like it was pulling away but Arizona answered each time. But the Cardinal’s 13-2 run spanning the end of the third quarter and beginning of the fourth was too much for the Wildcats to overcome.
Arizona had just gone on a 9-0 run of its own in the third quarter to cut Stanford’s 43-33 lead down to 43-42 at 7:02 in the quarter. Over the next seven minutes of the quarter and the opening minute of the fourth quarter, the Cardinal responded and grabbed a 58-46 advantage with 9:03 to play in the game.
70% — Stanford knocked down 7 of 10 shots in the fourth quarter, compared to 9 of 16 (56%) by UA.
6 — Stanford guard Jana Van Gytenbeek connected on a career-high six 3-pointers to finish second on the team with 18 points. She hit three of them in the second quarter, helping her team go into the break leading the Cats 41-33.
0 — Barnes wanted to go small to begin the game, starting Helena Pueyo in place of Lauren Ware. However, Pueyo struggled in 19 minutes of action and failed to record a point. Ware played 18 minutes off the bench and shot 2 for 4, with both buckets coming in the fourth quarter.
