Crisp Stanford, shaky Tennessee advance

On a crucial possession with 2:17 left, and Stanford clinging to a five-point lead, the Cardinal needed something good to happen.

They patiently worked it around, looking for an opening. Eventually all five players touched the ball, and as the shot clock was running down, Jayne Appel fired a perfect pass to Kayla Pedersen, who drained a three-pointer to pretty much seal the deal in Stanford’s 82-73 upset of UConn.

In the last ten seconds on the Tennessee-LSU game, Alexis Hornbuckle forced up an ugly airball because the Volunteers couldn’t get a decent shot, and then committed a foolish foul on Erica White. To her credit, White made both free throws to give the Tigers a 46-45 lead with 7.1 seconds left.

Then, however, the Tigers:

1. Allowed Candace Parker to get the inbounds pass;
2. Allowed her to dribble down the court with her right hand, despite the fact that her left arm was all but useless;
3. Failed to rotate to the weakside block when Parker penetrated past two defenders, opening up a pass to Nicky Anosike (who put up an extremely ugly uncontested layup with two seconds left that missed very badly); and
4. Failed to get anybody to the weakside block to screen out Hornbuckle, who followed Anosike’s miss with 0.7 seconds left to give the game to Tennessee.

To put it another way, Stanford won by playing the game well; Tennessee managed to avoid losing because LSU played worse.

In fact, it’s unfortunate that the TV lines weren’t cut for the battle between the SEC’s two best teams, because what was on display was hardly good promotion for women’s collegiate basketball. The 47-46 final, in truth, wouldn’t have been good promotion for girls’ high school basketball, as most prep teams can score that many points while playing eight fewer minutes.

Then again, that’s been the story in the SEC all season. The league is dominated by athletes, not basketball players, and though reputation says it’s the best conference in all the land, the eyes say it’s barely watchable. All season long, the SEC has played these same kind of grind-it-out, defense, rebounding and athleticism-erasing-skills games, and though the results are good in one sense, they are not so good in another.

Yes, two SEC teams made the Final Four. Yes, LSU and Tennessee are very good teams. But no, thank you, sitting through another game like that one is not high on anyone’s list. In case you’d forgotten, it was 3-2 after 7:29 of awful basketball. In that span, the two teams had combined to go two for 23 from the field and miss three of four free throws.

Speaking of free throws, LSU was seven of 19 from the line in a one-point loss. And Sylvia Fowles was positively Shaq-like (not surprising since they share an alma mater), bricking seven of 11 attempts, and dooming her team to its fifth straight loss in the Final Four.

Of course, Fowles was hardly alone, though her continual inability to make two-footers was a killer. The rest of her team, supposedly one of the best in the country, made nine baskets in 40 minutes. Think about that for a second: Here you have an elite team, a roster studded with, supposedly, elite players – and they manage to make nine baskets in 40 minutes?

In fact, here’s the play that summarizes LSU’s evening: It’s 37-33 Tennessee with 8:51 remaining. Allison Hightower gets to the line, and the highly touted recruit bricks two straight free throws. But Tennessee fails to block out, and Fowles bursts through to grab one of her 20 rebounds. She’s all alone under the basket, on the right side, as the Volunteers watch, immobile. She misses the layup.

Fowles is indeed a fine player, and will be a good pro, but she missed 14 shots, almost all from within five feet, and seven free throws. She turned the ball over four times, and didn’t have a single assist. And her team, which needed her to play well, wound up losing by one.

Then again, Fowles did block five shots, two of Parker’s on one crucial sequence, but Parker was essentially playing with one hand. She usually gets about a third of her baskets with her left hand, but Sunday, she had just one – and the grimace of pain after she scored that hoop made it clear she wasn’t going to go in that direction again.

Since she could only go right after dislocating her left shoulder Tuesday, it was easy for the 6-6 Fowles to control her, and indeed Parker was six of 27 for the night. But she got a lot more help than Fowles did, as both surprise starter Alberta Auguste and spunky point guard Shannon Bobbitt were in double figures. And though Hornbuckle had another bad game (one of eight, the bad foul on White), she did come through at the end, just as she did in the regional final against Rutgers.

But most likely, most of the nation had switched over the SportsCenter by that time, watching highlights of the Brewers beating the Giants that were far more entertaining – or they had fallen asleep on the couch, numbed by the combined 76 missed shots and 17 missed free throws contributed by the SEC’s finest.

Meanwhile, the SportsCenter highlights of a team from the consistently maligned Pac-10 showed a poised, talented team that played with intelligence and passion. Facing a more athletic Connecticut team that had lost just once all year, the Cardinal look the lead at 4-3, and simply never let go. They, to the surprise of almost everyone, controlled the game, and when the Huskies made their inevitable run to cut it to 47-46 with 14:067 left, calmly took advantage of freshman Maya Moore making the same mistake twice in a row (allowing Candace Wiggins two straight open looks from the right corner) to quickly jump back ahead.

Moore, however, continued to dazzle, showing much more than the ballyhooed Parker/Fowles duo. She was eight of 19 from the field (which would have been more impressive had she not been jacking up desperation threes at the end) en route to 20 points, had nine rebounds and handed out three assists (which would have been more but for some missed layups and bad hands on the other end of her passes). Yes, she had four turnovers, and made those two mistakes, but she is a freshman – and did block three shots as well.

Renee Montgomery, though, who was supposed to give Connecticut the edge in the backcourt, was just four of 18 and had just one assist, while Stanford sophomore JJ Hones was rock steady (the same four baskets, but 11 fewer shots) with six assists and just one turnover. In fact, Stanford had 20 assists on its 28 baskets, as the Cardinal constantly found the open man.

The list of Stanford heroes is long, but let’s start with Jayne Appel, who got no love from ESPN’s Doris Burke, who all but called her fat and out of shape. Appel, however, finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and four assists in 32 minutes, while the three UConn posts (Brittany Hunter, Tina Charles and Kaili McLaren) combined for 11 points, 12 rebounds and four assists – in 48 minutes.

Wiggins, of course, was remarkably good, but 6-4 freshman Pedersen made big play after big play, and Jillian Harmon came off the bench to have her best game since coming back from a foot injury.

In short, Stanford just played a very good game, shooting 44.4% from the field, 81.8% from the line and looked like a basketball team all night long. It’s hard to say what game Tennessee and LSU were playing, but it bore little resemblance to what went on in the first game of the night. But then again, Tennessee’s playing for a national championship, just like Stanford, and what happened Sunday really has no bearing on what might happen Tuesday.

But for the sake of the game, let’s all hope that the smooth Pac-10 imposes it kind of game Tuesday, no matter who wins, and that the biggest game of the year in women’s basketball highlights how West Coast style, not the SEC’s.