Pac-12’s best on display in title game

The conference is guaranteed its first women’s basketball champion since 1992.

SAN ANTONIO — The last time that Tara Van-Derveer and Stanford were playing for a national championship, the Pac-12 had just 10 schools and the Cardinal were the standard bearer for the conference.

Now 11 years later, the Pac-12 is on top of the women’s basketball world with the Cardinal facing Arizona on Sunday night for the title. The conference is guaranteed its first champion since the Hall of Fame coach and the Cardinal won their last title in 1992.

“I’m really proud of the Pac-12 to have two teams in the national championship game,” Van-Derveer said. “You know, this is not something that a lot of people could have imagined 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago. And it’s really, really exciting.”

Stanford was last in the title game in 2010, losing to Connecticut in the Alamodome — the same building the Cardinal will be playing in on Sunday night. The conference became the Pac-12 a year later after expansion. The league has had six different schools in the Final Four since 2013, but none reached the title game until Friday night when both Stanford and Arizona advanced.

“In the Pac-12 we’ve been saying all along we have the best teams in the country and to have two Pac-12 teams speaks for itself,” Arizona coach Adia Barnes said. “Stanford won the Pac-12 championship and we were second. Both of us in the Final Four and championship game, it means a lot for our conference.”

To get to Sunday night’s game the Cardinal held on to beat South Carolina 66-65 on a basket by Haley Jones with 32 seconds left Friday night. After Jones’ shot put the Cardinal up, Stanford survived two last-second misses by the Gamecocks.

Arizona didn’t need any last-second karma to beat the Huskies 69-59. Wildcats AllAmerica Aari McDonald scored 26 points and the team played stifling defense to put the clamps on Connecticut.

“No one thought we’d win, no one thought we’d be here,” Barnes said. “We don’t care. We believed in each other. We believed, our team believed.”

McDonald has been a huge reason why. The 5-foot-6 guard, who is lightning quick, is one of the rare two-way players in the game who can affect contests on both ends of the court.

Arizona lost twice to Stanford during the regular season.