The Michigan Daily - michigandaily.com

Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 7A

The Michigan Daily - michieandailv.com A Wednesday, March 27, 2013 - 7A

Season ends in Palo Alto

'M' left out of barrage

By DANIEL FELDMAN
Daily Sports Writer
Playing on Stanford's home
court of Maple Pavilion, the
Michigan women's basketball
team knew it would be a battle
against one of the best programs
in the country. With their sea-
son on the line, the Wolverines
needed to play their best basket-
ball of the year to have any chance
to advance to the Sweet 16 for the
first time in program history.
Things looked promising for
Michigan
(9-7BigTen, MICHIGAN 40
22-11 over- STANFORD 73
all) when
senior guard Jenny Ryan swished
a 3-pointer at the 18:29 mark in
the first half to tie the early game,
3-3.
But on the next possession for
top-seeded Stanford (17-1 Pac
12, 33-2), junior forward Chiney
Ogwumike tapped out a missed
shot to Joslyn Tinkle, who put the
ball back in for an easy layup, giv-
ing the Cardinal a two-point lead.
That would only start the scor-
ing barrage for Stanford, as it
continued to make shot after shot
from deep in its 73-40 blowout
I victory.
"Anytime you start a game,
you want to start with the first
punch, and they started com-
fortably, making all those shots,"
Ryan said. "Once they got on that
roll, they just kept going and it
was their night. They started off
strong and never looked back."
Leading the way for the Car-
dinal was Tinkle, who made her
first four shots from the field to
post 11 points in the first stanza
in a shade over seven minutes
of action. She finished with a
team-high 21 points on 7-for-10
shooting while grabbing seven
rebounds.
The Wolverines' problems
guarding threes compounded, as
the Cardinal went 8-for-14 from

Michigan coach Kim Barnes Arico watches hernteam get blown out in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Tuesday.

By GLENN MILLERJr.
Daily Sports Writer
On Sunday, Villanova coach
Harry Peretta predicted that the
Michigan women's basketball
team would need 10 a-pointers to
topple Stanford in the 2nd round
of the NCAA tournament.
Though by the end of Tues-
day's lopsided defeat, it wasn't
the Wolverines who fulfilled Per-
etta's ambitious quota.
The Cardinal buried 12
3-pointers and shot 48-percent
from behind the arc en route to
a 73-40 victory over Michigan. If
it wasn't already a tall order for
the eighth-seeded Wolverines
to upset a top-seeded Stanford
squad at home, it didn't help that
the Cardinal shot nearly 54-per-
cent from the floor.
"I don't think Stanford had
been shooting the ball from
the outside that well prior to
tonight," said Michigan coach
Kim Barnes Arico. "They just
came out on fire."
Not only was Stanford on fire,
but the Wolverines struggled to
find any consistency against the
stifling Cardinal defense.
Senior guard Jenny Ryan
agreed with Peretta's predic-
tion, and gave the Wolverines a
glimpse of hope in the opening
minutes after exchanging three-
pointers with the Cardinal. But
soon after, the scoring exchange
clearlybecame aone-sided affair.
Michigan simply couldn't
find the bottom of the net for
the remainder of the contest,
recording a dismal 29.2 percent
shooting performance. In a game
where the Wolverines desper-
ately needed to be efficient from
behind the arc, they made only
three of 16 attempts.
If Michigan had any chance
at accomplishing such a monu-
mental upset, it would've come
from the sharpshooting of their
leading scorer, senior guard Kate

Thompson. Thompson, who
barely eclipsed the 1,000-career
point mark in her final game, hit
only one of 11 attempts from the
field while failing to bury a single
long-range jumper.
In preparation for Stanford,
the Wolverines were adamant
about containing the Cardinal's
elite center, Chiney Oguwmike.
Michigan publicly admitted their
game plan would force Stanford's
outside shooting, not Ogwumike,
to lead the Cardinal to the Sweet
16.
And the Cardinal would make
them pay.
Stanford forward Joslyn Tin-
kle was red hot from the perim-
eter, nailing all five of her 3-point
attempts during a 21-point per-
formance. As the Wolverines
eliminated any post-game in
their zone defense, the Cardinal
continued to drain the ball from
beyond the arc.
"Credit to them for shooting
the way they did," said senior for-
ward Rachel Sheffer. "We tried
to take away their post. We had
pretty good success doing that,
but they just kept hitting shot
after shot."
If there was any question as
to why Stanford deserved a top
seed in the Spokane region, its
shooting performance against
Michigan added yet another
facet to the already dangerous
squad. The Wolverines' chances
ofupsettingone of the bestteams
in the nation were already slim,
but it's nearly impossible to beat
any team that shoots lights-out
from attempts that might have
counted on an NBA court.
"I don't think we really rec-
ognized what kind of range that
they had on their jump shots,"
Barnes Arico said. "They weren't
just threes, they were pretty
far back behind the line. I don't
know if we've had to come out on
that many shooters that deep all
year long."

beyond the arc in the first half
to comfortably push its lead to
20-plus points.
"They really shared the basket-
ball extremely well and knocked
down shots," said Michigan coach
Kim Barnes Arico. "Some were
open shots. Some were tough
shots. I was very impressed with
how they played tonight. I can
see why they're the number one
seed."
Meanwhile, Michigan went
0-for-6 from deep following
Ryan's triple to begin its night
of scoring. Five of those missed
attempts were by senior forward
Kate Thompson, who posted just
three points in the firsthalf as the
Wolverines were outshot 60-per-
cent to 27-percent from the field.
But shooting wasn't the only
issue for Michigan. The Wolver-
ines managed just eight rebounds
in the first half, while Stanford
had 15 in the stanza - Ogwumike
had eight by herself and 15 in the

game. Michigan finished with
just 17, paling in comparison to
the Cardinal's 34.
"We didn't even have an oppor-
tunity to grab any because they
made pretty much all the shots
that they took," Barnes Arico
said. "We knew (Ogwumike)
would be difficult. I thought we
did a decent job at times on her.
They're were tips and deflections
that we weren't able to come up
with loose balls. And I thought
that really hurt us compared to
our actual rebounding on her. She
kept balls alive."
Down by 25 points at halftime,
the only chance that the Wol-
verines had at a comeback was
to shoot at the extreme rate that
Stanford did to begin the game.
That didn't happen.
The Cardinal continued to
shoot the lights out of the gym,
knocking down four more
3-pointers as it coasted between
high 20-point and low 30-point

leads in the half.
While Ryan would go on to
lead to Michigan with 11 points
on 5-for-5 shooting, it was all
for moot, as the captain's colle-
giate career came to an end. The
loss also marked the end for four
other Wolverine seniors, Thomp-
son and forwards Rachel Sheffer,
Nya Jordan and Sam Arnold. The
seniors ended their careers with
80 wins, making them the win-
ningest class in Michigan history.
Michigan is now eliminated
from the NCAA Tournament,
and Stanford will advance to the
Sweet 16 to play Georgia. After
the way it played tonight, Barnes
Arico has no doubts Stanford can
win it all.
"You are not 33-2 and not an
outstandingbasketball team," she
said. "The teams that they lost to
are incredible teams to have that
record. I think if they continue to
play that way, they can challenge
for the National Championship."

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