No. 1 UConn Too Good for No. 2 Stanford

HARTFORD, Conn. -- To say that the top-ranked Connecticut women's basketball team had been dominant entering Wednesday's showdown with No. 2 Stanford would be an understatement.

The tone prior to the contest was set by stories like this from the Hartford Courant's Jeff Jacobs, who suggested that UConn -- and its fans, to an extent -- were begging for more than just a win against the Cardinal. The Huskies wanted a challenge.

And Stanford obliged -- for one half, at least.

Maya Moore, pictured right, had 23 points and nine rebounds and Tina Charles added 20 and 12 as the Huskies won their 49th straight game, overcoming a rare halftime deficit en route to an 80-68 victory over Stanford in a battle between the top two teams in women's college basketball.

The triumph added to the third-longest winning streak in the history of women's Division I play.

"It feels good to know that when we are challenged, we can bounce back," said Moore, whose Huskies last faced a halftime hole at the 2008 Final Four against -- you guessed it -- Stanford, which also handed UConn its last loss in that game.

This contest featured a more positive outcome for UConn, which outscored Stanford 42-28 after halftime and was able to empty its bench in the final minutes.

Kalana Greene scored 17 points and Tiffany Hayes added 16 for the Huskies, who also beat the Cardinal in last season's national semifinals on their way to a 39-0 record and a sixth national championship. Huskies coach Geno Auriemma insisted that Wednesday's contest didn't have close to the same significance.

"We are 10-0 and a beat a really good team tonight," Auriemma said. "Other than that, there aren't any trophies, no rings, no nothing."

UConn, though, seems poised for a similar title run this campaign, making an argument that it is a better club than last year's version that also featured current WNBA forward Renee Montgomery. Frankly, the numbers don't lie.

In their nine games prior to facing the Cardinal, the Huskies had decimated their opponents by an average of 46.4 points, winning all those contests by at least 25. They engineered another double-digit win Wednesday despite a slow start.

Auriemma came to a simple diagnosis for UConn's troubles in the first -- it simply didn't make enough shots.

"They packed (their defense) into the lane, and we couldn't shoot them out of it," the coach said.

Another reason for Stanford's two-point halftime lead was the combination of Kayla Pedersen and Nnemkadi Ogwumike, who teamed up for 28 points in the opening half.

Star center Jayne Appel, in a battle with Charles for the attention of WNBA scouts in attendance, looked tentative from the start. She scored 12 points on 5-of-12 shooting but seemed more content with throwing the ball out to the perimeter than imposing her will in the paint.

"I really think this was Tina's best game since she has come to Connecticut," Auriemma said in the wake of Charles' matchup with Appel -- a player she has known since she was 12 thanks to the national AAU circuits.

"Jayne is the one post player I know everything about," Charles admitted.

That being said, the Huskies waited for the second half to kick it into gear.

They started the second on a 27-9 run and forced a timeout by Stanford at 9:19, when Hayes' layup pushed UConn's lead to 16 -- a point at which it never looked back.

The Huskies finally had hit their stride, forcing turnovers and getting out on the break to the delight of a delirious capacity crowd of 16,294 at the XL Center. It was the first sellout for the UConn women in Hartford since a game against rival Tennessee on Jan. 6, 2007.

The Cardinal, at this point, looked like the rest of the Huskies' opponents this season -- overwhelmed.

Prior to the game, Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer suggested that while it's always a good opportunity to play UConn, the game was nothing more than a stiff December test with the NCAA Tournament still months away.

"They are head and shoulders above us right now, but this was good for us," VanDerveer said after the game.

The Cardinal have had a lot of tough exams this season -- in and out of the classroom, no doubt -- beating Rutgers, Duke and Tennessee before traveling to Hartford on Wednesday.

They seemed up to the task early on, erasing a 19-10 deficit with a 15-2 run. The Cardinal took a 25-21 advantage on a jumper by Pedersen to provide the Huskies with their largest deficit of the season. The teams traded baskets for the remainder of the half, with Appel dropping in the final bucket to make it 40-38 heading into the break.

Then came UConn's second-half onslaught.

"It's hard to compensate for aggressive play, and that's what got us," Stanford's Ogwumike said.

Ogwumike scored 20 points for the Cardinal (9-1), who were outrebounded 43-29 and committed 17 turnovers.

Auriemma, for his part, was happy that his younger players got to experience such an exciting environment provided by this matchup, saying he told the players this is why they came to Connecticut. For Auriemma, however, he came to Connecticut to coach -- something he hasn't had to do much of this season.

"It gave me something to do today," the coach quipped, referring to the competitiveness of the game.

And that's all that Auriemma and his players wanted.