Cardinal runs down the Aggies

The women's game was delayed by 45 minutes tonight as the Aggie men blew a nine-point lead in the last couple of minutes of their preceding game and took it into overtime, where they lost to North Dakota State.

About half of the spectators departed, leaving maybe 2000 to watch the women's game, 50 or so wearing Cardinal red. The Cardinal wore new stylish black road warrior uniforms.

The Cardinal's offense was delayed by two quarters as the Aggie women stifled it with their fierce zone defense. The Cardinal player defense was equally effective at stifling the Aggies. Each team made about 30% of their shots, and the halftime score was just 29-24 in favor of the Cardinal.

Tara may have reminded her players at the break that, "It counts now". On returning to the court, most of them practiced shooting 3-pointers during the warmup.

They greatly intensified their defense in the second half, with a lot of effective pressing and trapping that disrupted and wore out the Aggies. They began the third quarter with a 20-2 run, shot 46% to the Aggies' 18% in the last two quarters and won 74-45.

In last week's press conference, Tara said she would be really happy if she had five players who scored close to double digits. That happened tonight — Bri scored 15 points, Alanna 13, Lili 10, Erica 10 and Karlie 9.

Tara also said that the Cardinal has seven pretty good 3-point shooters to replace Bonnie's prowess beyond the arc. Eight of them launched a total of 24 long shots tonight, although only four of them succeeded — Bri hit 3-of-4, Karlie 2-of-6, Lili and Alanna each 1-of-4.

This is really a fun team to watch — with the emphasis on team. Six players blocked shots — Kaylee, Erica, Kailee and Tess each had two; Alanna and Alexa had one apiece. Marta tallied two steals; Kaylee, Erica, Bri, Brittany and Kailee one apiece.

Eight players had assists — Marta dished four; Bri three; Karlie, Lili and Tess, two; Kaylee, Brittany and Kailee one. The team's collective assist/turnover ratio was a nice 1.45.

Everyone played. All except one got rebounds. Erica grabbed the most (11) and tallied her third career double-double.

In oher Pac-12 action today, six other teams played their first game of the season. All of them won.

Here are game reports and commentary:

• No. 16 Stanford Women Roll Past UC Davis 74-45 in Opener, the Associated Press game recap
• Win No, 1, the game recap and stats from Stanford Athletics
• UC Davis scares No. 16 Stanford early before falling, the UC Davis Athletics game recap