Faults easy to find — can they be fixed?

So far, nobody on Tara VanDerveer’s Stanford team has performed consistently enough to fill the roles vacated by last season’s big three of Erica McCall (rebounder and post defender), Karlie Samuelson (three-point shooter) and Briana Roberson (perimeter defender).

Stanford (9-7, 3-1 Pac-12) had better get its act together this weekend against two of the top scorers in the Pac-12. Borislava Hristova and Washington State (8-8, 1-3) comes to Maples Pavilion on Friday night, followed by Amber Melgoza and Washington (6-9, 0-4) on Sunday afternoon.

Hristova, a 6-foot sophomore from Bulgaria, missed most of last season with an injury. She leads the Pac-12 in scoring (19.1 points per game) after dropping 36 on Colorado and 29 on Utah last weekend. Melgoza, a 5-10 sophomore, is the conference’s third-leading scorer (17.9 ppg).

It’s possible to make too much of an early loss to a ranked team on the road, but Sunday’s 73-66 defeat to No. 25 Arizona State — which dropped the previously No. 24 Cardinal out of the Top 25 — was vexing for various reasons.

First, the Cardinal got to the free-throw line just nine times (making five) compared with ASU’s 39 (24 of which were made). Sixteen of ASU’s foul shots came when Stanford was forced to foul in the closing minutes. In any event, the 19-point disparity was too much to overcome, although VanDerveer didn’t blame the officials.

“We were fouling,” she said. “We have to play without fouling: get lower, get in our stance, work harder defensively.”

Guard Marta Sniezek said the Sun Devils were very aggressive on both ends of the court, but the Cardinal were slow to pick up on how tightly the officials were calling the game. “We struggled with fouls,” she said.

Second, the taller Stanford rebounders were completely outplayed on the boards (4724). None of the Cardinal forwards had more than four rebounds, and the team’s total was its lowest in three years.

In particular, VanDerveer bemoaned her team’s failure to box out on ASU foul shots, helping the Sun Devils to 13 offensive boards.

Third, the defense wasn’t up to par. It allowed 6-3 center Charnea Johnson-Chapman, averaging 7.3 points, to hit all six of her field-goal tries on her way to a season-high 16 points.

“We need to be more competitive,” VanDerveer said. “Let’s step up and guard the girl. We can’t let that happen.”

Including nonconference games, Stanford is forcing just 11.8 turnovers a game, second lowest in the conference. That figure might be skewed by the very difficult nonconference competition the Cardinal faced, as they were 0-5 against ranked teams. But even in its four Pac-12 games, Stanford is eighth (12.8).

Stanford typically has relied on its size advantage to clog passing lanes, and seldom uses presses or extends its defense to pressure the ball. VanDerveer said that pressure against quick teams like UCLA and ASU would be self-defeating. “We’re better off keeping people in front of us,” she said.

Despite all the problems, the Cardinal were in the game until the final two minutes. For a program used to dominating the Pac-12, that was small consolation.