Ranked No. 1 in the nation just a week ago, the Stanford women's basketball team will take a No. 4 ranking into its Pac-12 Conference opening weekend.

The Cardinal (11-1) will look to bounce back from its first loss of 2012-13 against No. 20 Colorado (11-0) on Friday in Boulder at 7 p.m.

Stanford leads the all-time series, 7-4, which includes a 68-46 victory last season in Maples Pavilion as part of the series sweep by the Cardinal.

Stanford saw a pair of impressive streaks end last weekend in its disappointing 61-35 loss to newly minted No. 1 Connecticut -- a home streak of 82 games (second-longest in NCAA history) and its season-opening winning streak of 11 straight -- the second best in school history.

While those streaks fell, another will be on the line Friday for Stanford, which has won 78 straight games against conference foes.

That run began with an 85-57 win at Oregon on Jan. 22, 2009. Stanford's last loss against a Pac-12 foe came Jan. 18, 2009 in a 57-54 decision at California. Following that loss, the Cardinal won its final 13 regular-season conference games and has since put together three straight 18-0 campaigns (2010-12). The streak also includes 11 wins at the Pac-12 Tournament.

While Colorado is no UConn, the Buffaloes are still unbeaten and led by the play of Chucky Jeffery (12.2 ppg, 8.2 rpg) and Arielle Roberson (15.7 ppg, 6.1 rpg).

After six weeks atop both the Associated Press and USA Today Sports Coaches' Polls, Stanford fell to No. 4 in the Associated Press Poll and to No. 3 in the USA Today Sports Coaches' Poll following Saturday's loss to UConn.

If recent history is any indication, Stanford should bounce back as the program has only lost consecutive games twice over the past five seasons. Since the start of this recent run of five straight Final Four seasons (2007-08), the Cardinal has never lost three games in a row, and has only lost consecutive games on Jan. 4 and 6, 2008 (69-56 at UCLA, 73-72 at USC) and Dec. 16 and 19, 2010 (91-71 at DePaul, 82-72 in overtime at Tennessee).

This weekend's trip to Colorado and Utah (Sunday) opens up Stanford's 2012-13 Pac-12 campaign and the defense of the conference regular-season crown it has won for 12 seasons running. In fact, with the current run starting in 2000-01, the Cardinal has been the only regular-season champion that the Pac-12 (and previously the Pac-10) has known through the first 12 years of the new millennium.

Overall, Stanford has won outright or shared the conference regular-season title 21 out of a possible 26 times, and since 2001-02 the only conference postseason hardware not won by the Cardinal has been Pac-10 Tournament titles in 2002 and 2006.

Stanford junior forward Chiney Ogwumike battled her way to her ninth straight double-double and 10th on the year with 18 points and 13 rebounds Saturday. The 10th double-double now puts Ogwumike in third place nationally, and kept her in the top 10 among the nation's scoring (21.8 ppg - 10th) and rebounding (12.8 rpg - fourth) leaders

— Palo Alto Online Sports

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