Ouch. That's the sound of a bad loss slapped on the No. 12-ranked Stanford women's basketball team.
For the second consecutive game, the Cardinal let a double-digit lead slip away, this time falling to host Arizona, 60-57, in Tucson on Sunday.
The Cardinal falls into fourth place in the Pac-12, two games behind leader Oregon State and a game behind co-second place Arizona State and California. The Bears beat the Sun Devils in Tempe.
Stanford (17-7, 9-3), which was up by as many 14 early in the second half, trailed by three with five minutes to go.
The Cardinal then used an 11-0 run to take a 54-46 lead on a Taylor Greenfield 3-pointer with 2:14 remaining, but the Wildcats (9-14, 2-10) closed by scoring 14 of the game's final 17 points to earn its first win over Stanford since 2004, ending a 25-game losing streak to the Cardinal.
The Wildcats went ahead, 58-57, with two seconds left.
Arizona closed the game on a 10-0 run, scoring all 10 in the game's final minute.
Lili Thompson opened the second half with a layup to match Stanford's largest lead of the game, 32-18, with 19:31 to go. From that point on, the Cardinal would go nearly 10 minutes without hitting a field goal, missing 12 straight attempts.
Amber Orrange ended the drought, scoring on two consecutive possessions to give Stanford a bit of breathing room, 40-35.
A 10-0 run brought Arizona within four, 32-28, and the Wildcats kept coming. They pulled to within one on four occasions before a LaBrittney Jones bucket in the paint gave Arizona a 44-43 lead with 5:46 left, its first edge since early in the first half.
Coupled with Friday night's 53-52 setback at No. 10 Arizona State, Stanford was swept over a conference weekend for the first time since it traveled to Los Angeles and dropped games to UCLA (Jan. 4) and USC (Jan. 6) in 2008.
Stanford's seven overall losses and three conference losses are both the program's highest totals since 2005-06, when the Cardinal went 26-8 and 15-3 in the Pac-10 en route to a NCAA Regional Final.
This season marks the first since 2000-01 that Stanford has had multiple two-game losing streaks.
Orrange and Thompson led Stanford with 13 points apiece. It was Orrange's seventh-straight game in double figures, matching a career high. Kaylee Johnson grabbed 11 rebounds, her 13th double-digit effort of the year and fourth straight.
Stanford will attempt to get back in the win column when it hosts USC on Friday at 6 p.m. in a game televised on the Pac-12 Networks.
Comments