Maybe Stanford isn’t a lock to win the Pacific-10 Conference Tournament after all.
With the start of the tournament just days away, the No. 12 Cardinal is still the favorite to come out on top. But it’s just not a sure thing anymore.
Stanford closed the season on a shaky note last week, splitting road games against Oregon and Oregon State.
After losing 67-66 to Oregon on Thursday, Stanford was lucky to avoid being swept as Oregon State blew several chances Saturday to defeat the Cardinal in the game’s final minute.
Forward Nicole Powell rescued the Cardinal with a 15-foot baseline jumper with 5.4 seconds remaining, helping Stanford to a 67-66 win against the Beavers.
The split cost Stanford a shot at an outright Pac-10 title. Instead, the Cardinal finished the season as co-champions with Arizona, with both teams sporting a 14-4 conference mark.
Stanford is the No. 1 seed in the Pac-10 Tournament after a conference tiebreaker.
Despite the unexpected split, Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer was focusing on the positive effect of defeating Oregon State.
“We needed this,” VanDerveer told The Daily Barometer on Saturday. “We had to work very hard for it. We looked absolutely dead in the water, then we started pressing and I think the aggressiveness defensively really helped us.”
Stanford will face the winner of Friday’s Pac-10 Tournament game between No. 8 Oregon and No. 9 California on Saturday.
One advantage the Cardinal may have entering the tournament is that all of its conference struggles came on the road. HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif., is only a 30-minute drive from Stanford and could act as a second home court.

Statistical leaders
Arizona and Stanford emerged as the Pac-10’s top offensive teams during conference play.
The Wildcats (73.8) and Cardinal (73.2) were the only teams to average more than 70 points per Pac-10 contest, each holding more than a four-point advantage over third-place UCLA.
Oregon and Washington State were the only teams to average less than 60 points per game, each averaging 59.4.
UCLA finished as the top rebounding team during conference play, averaging 37.9 per game. The Bruins held a slight advantage over Washington (37.8), Arizona (37.7) and Southern California (37.7)
Oregon (32.9) and California (32.6) finished at the bottom of the conference in rebounding.
Individually, Washington’s Giuliana Mendiola finished as the conference’s leading scorer. Last season’s Pac-10 Player of the Year averaged 21.1 points per conference game. Powell finished second at 20.2 points per conference game, followed by Arizona’s Dee-Dee Wheeler (18.8) and UCLA’s Noelle Quinn (18.1).
Oregon’s Brandi Davis was 13th at 11.8 points per Pac-10 game.

Joy in The Palouse
Washington State closed out its Pac-10 schedule Saturday with a 75-72 win over Arizona State. It was only the 10th conference victory for the Cougars in the past five years.
Bianca McCall led the way for Washington State with 18 points.
“This is a great win,” McCall said after the game. “I can’t really describe my emotions right now. I am just taking it all in. We had the determination that we knew we were winning this game and we just finished it.”