Maples Pavilion is a place no basketball team wants to visit.
And for the Oregon women’s basketball team, the scene was all too familiar, as the Ducks have not beat Stanford in its arena since 1987.
Oregon walked off the court Thursday night after suffering a 31-point loss to the Cardinal, 85-54.
After a thriller against Stanford on Jan. 11, when the Cardinal squeaked by with a one-point victory, Oregon wasn’t able to repeat the performance away from McArthur Court.
Oregon (8-13, 4-8 Pac-10) started the night strong with a determination to seek revenge from a month ago, but halfway through the first half Stanford (18-2, 10-1) proved to have the upper hand.
The Ducks jumped to a 9-4 lead within the first five minutes of play and appeared revived from its recent home loss to Arizona. But as Stanford junior Nicole Powell and sophomore T’Nae Thiel began to find rhythm, Oregon found it tougher to hang with the No. 6-ranked team.
“We started the game well and did some things very well offensively and execution defensively,” Oregon head coach Bev Smith told KSCR-AM. “We played as well as we could in those first five minutes and then we started to gamble and they created confidence with that.”
Yet Oregon stood strong through the first 12 minutes off three three-pointers by sophomore Brandi Davis and solid play by the other Duck starters.
The Ducks suffered as the four-player bench hurt them, and the offense was not executing as it began. The Cardinal had everything going their way in the final minutes and went on an 11-0 run at one point to lead 40-28.
Oregon did not weather the storm, as the Ducks headed to the locker room down 45-28.
Stanford had sizzled through the first 20 minutes, shooting over 66 percent from the field and outrebounding the Ducks 17-8.
Freshman Carolyn Ganes would get the first bucket of the second half to bring Oregon within 15 points and let hope linger that a comeback was possible.
The Cardinal quickly tried to break Oregon’s spirit after the first six minutes, by upping their lead to 56-34. The Ducks could never get closer than 20 after that point, despite all their efforts.
“The most important thing right now for us is to recoup and recharge those batteries because they are on low,” Smith said. “This was going to catch up to us sooner or later in this long Pac-10 season.”
Oregon finished its night shooting 35.7 percent from the field after shooting over 40 percent in the first half. The Ducks were over 80 percent from the foul line, yet lost the battle of the boards again, 39-22.
The Ducks were led by Ganes and sophomore Amy Taylor with 10 points on the night. Taylor matched her career-high with her double-figure output. Davis, who had a quick nine points to start the night, did not score after the first 10 minutes, and ended up shooting just 3-for-14 from the field.
Not surprisingly, Powell set the pace for Stanford with 15 points in her 30 minutes, along with sophomore Kelley Suminski, who also added 15. Sophomore Azella Perryman added a solid performance with 14 points, eight rebounds and shot 6-of-6 from the charity line.
The Cardinal finished the night shooting 56.4 percent from the field along with nine bombs from downtown.
Oregon must now recover from the tough loss and get ready to face California on Saturday in Berkeley. The Ducks defeated Cal in the teams’ first matchup Jan. 9 at McArthur Court.