SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer pulled aside the senior guard Candice Wiggins to make sure her star was not feeling uneasy or nervous.
“She says, I’m not nervous,” VanDerveer recalled. “And I said: Well Candice, we want to play more. We don’t want this to be our last game.”
Wiggins and the rest of her Stanford teammates got VanDerveer’s message. And if Wiggins continues at this level, the Cardinal may be playing more than one game at the Final Four in Tampa, Fla.
Wiggins put together perhaps the best performance in her stellar career Monday night, scoring 41 points and leading second-seeded Stanford to a 98-87 victory over top-seeded Maryland in the Spokane Region final.
Playing with a swagger and a confidence that grew from being denied a No. 1 seed in the tournament, the Cardinal is back in the Final Four for the first time in 11 years. It will face the winner of Tuesday’s game between Connecticut and Rutgers on Sunday.
“This team is special,” said Wiggins, who was part of Stanford teams that reached the regional finals in her freshman and sophomore seasons. “I’m not surprised. We knew we had a special team.”
Wiggins is the first player in women’s tournament history to score at least 40 points in two games. A week earlier, she had a career-best 44 points in an 88-54 victory against Texas-El Paso in a second-round game.
“We have had some great teams, we have had some great individual players, but I don’t know that there’s ever been anyone that has done more for their team than Candice does, in so many ways,” VanDerveer said. “I’m just really happy for her and really happy for our team to have this opportunity.”
The victory was Stanford’s 22nd in a row and the Cardinal matched a team record with its 34th victory of the season. Stanford is making its seventh trip to the Final Four, and it is the first team from west of the Rockies to reach the national semifinals since 1997, when it made its last appearance.
Wiggins received plenty of help, and she needed it, in holding off Maryland guard Kristi Toliver, who had a career-high 35 points.
Stanford guard J J Hones, who had made only 4 of 16 shots in the tournament before Monday, scored a career-high 23 points, including four 3-pointers. And the freshman forward Kayla Pedersen had 15 points, 7 assists and 6 rebounds. Their contributions helped compensate for a tough night for Jayne Appel, the Cardinal’s second-leading scorer, who was held to 11 points.
“I felt like people might have been sleeping on me,” Hones said. “I felt like it was kind of my duty to make shots.”
Appel and Pedersen played critical roles on defense. They held Maryland forward Crystal Langhorne, the Atlantic Coast Conference player of the year and the Terrapins’ leading scorer, to only six shots. She finished with 13 points, after scoring 28 in the regional semifinal against Vanderbilt.
Maryland, which won the national title two years ago, ended its season, which included Coach Brenda Frese having twin boys in February, at 33-4.
“Sometimes it’s just not your day,” Frese said. “You have to give credit where credit is due, and I thought that Stanford did a tremendous job.”
Wiggins provided problems for the Terrapins all over the court, whether hitting step-back 3-pointers or going between defenders in the lane.
She made 10 of 22 shots, including five 3s, and was 16 of 19 at the free-throw line.
“They were just so hard to stop,” Maryland forward Laura Harper said. “They were all playing with confidence. Everything was working.”
Wiggins ignited the Cardinal’s decisive run early in the second half. A 3-pointer by Toliver with 14 minutes 50 seconds left pulled the Terrapins to 56-51, the closest they had been since trailing, 41-38, late in the first half.
Wiggins answered with a 3-pointer, and after a Maryland miss, Rosalyn Gold-Onwude hit Stanford’s 11th 3-pointer of the night.
The Cardinal finished the spurt with a putback by Appel and a 3-point play by Pedersen.
Maryland made one final charge. Toliver scored 9 straight points to cut the Stanford lead to single digits, at 79-72, with 6:19 to play. Wiggins answered with a 3-pointer moments later.
Now Wiggins is on her way to the Final Four, completing one of the accomplishments missing on her résumé at Stanford.
“I knew this wasn’t going to be my last game,” she said.