Stanford advances despite poor shooting

Even Stanford playing poorly was plenty good enough.

The Cardinal will be playing for its sixth consecutive conference championship when Stanford meets California on Saturday in the title game of the Pacific Life Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament at Staples Center.

Despite its worst shooting of the season, Stanford defeated Arizona State, 5243, Friday for its schoolrecord-tying 27th consecutive win this season and 77th straight against a conference opponent.

The No. 2-ranked Cardinal (30-1) had 16 turnovers and shot a season-low 29%.

“Some days you have games like that, and thankfully we were able to overcome that with great rebounding, I thought excellent defense, [and] kind of just not getting discouraged,” Stanford Coach Tara Vanderveer said.

The Cardinal made 22 of 27 free throws and had a 4828 rebounding edge. It helped to have the conference’s best player, Nnemkadi Ogwumike, who had 24 points, 12 rebounds and made six consecutive free throws in the final minutes.

Kimberly Brandon, leading scorer of Arizona State (20-11), was held scoreless.

California 64, Washington State 49: So much for celebrating a championship game appearance. The first postgame media question to Cal Coach Lindsay Gottlieb was about the beast from across the bay.

“I don’t even get to enjoy it for 30 seconds before talking about Stanford?” she good-naturedly complained.

Cal (24-8) faces the heavy tournament favorite after dispatching the league Cinderella. Washington State (13-20) had never won a tournament game before earning a semifinal spot with two wins this week.

Cal got 14 points, 10 rebounds and nine assists from Britt Boyd, 13 points and 15 rebounds from Gennifer Brandon and 11 points and nine rebounds from Talia Caldwell.