Sweet Sixteen expectations

Jillian, Jeanette and Nneka joined Tara for a long press conference a couple of days ago. They talked about the Cardinal's path to the Sweet Sixteen and their expectations of the next game. Bay Area sports columnists who attended wrote mostly about Nneka and Jeanette in these articles:

• Stanford's latest freshman sensation does more than play basketball by Elliott Almond, Mercury News
• Stanford freshman raising her game in NCAAs by Rick Eymer, Palo Alto Online
• Stanford point guard picks up the pace by Michelle Smith, San Francisco Chronicle

ESPN columnist Graham Hays, who probably didn't attend the press conference, takes a broader view of the key to a Sweet Sixteen victory for the Cardinal :

As goes Jillian Harmon, so goes Stanford? On a team with Jayne Appel, Kayla Pedersen and Jeanette Pohlen, perhaps Harmon's production is more effect than cause, but she does seem to be the canary (Cardinal?) in the coal mine.

A lot of what Harmon provides in abundance -- defense, energy, experience -- doesn't show up on the stat sheet, but in her team's four losses this season, she has averaged 6.5 points on 25.8 percent shooting. In the 29 wins in which she has participated (she missed two games), she has averaged 10.3 points on 51 percent shooting.

Before anyone starts dreaming up box-and-one defenses for Harmon, those numbers are probably more illustrative of the larger idea that stopping Stanford means disrupting its collective flow more than any single player, even Appel. The Cardinal registered assists on 65.1 percent of their field goals, the highest percentage of any team remaining in the field.

This is the video of the press conference.