At least that’s the hope for our women tonight.  They take on Stanford in the pac-10 tournament championship, hoping to accomplish what they couldn’t in the regular season: win the conference title and beat the furd.  Cal is currently ranked ninth or tenth, depending on the poll, and with a win they’ll assuredly wrap up a 3 seed in the NCAA tournament.  A 3 seed means a very winnable game in the second round and a fairly manageable one in the sweet sixteen.  If they lose, Cal’s probably looking at a 4/5 seed, a coin flip against a comparable team in the second round, and a game against a top 5 opponent if they make the sweet 16.  Cal’s done very well against lower ranked opponents (a remarkable 26-1!), but not so well against those top 10 opponents (0-4), so it’s safe to assume that Cal’s tournament run will be heavily influenced by their seeding.

So, after losing twice to Stanford in the regular season, what’s it going to take to beat them tonight and grab that 3 seed?  I think Cal will try to play a game very similar to the thrilling contest as Haas.  That one came down to the very end, and the women were thisclose to claiming conference supremecy then.  Stanford still has their Baron and we still don’t, but in that game Hampton and Walker got their points/boards, Cal didn’t turn the ball over too much, and Baron/Wiggins was forced into a dismal offensive performance (until the very end, when she won the game).  Her offensive woes were largely the result of Natasha Vital’s defensive effort, which in turn led to Vital’s own poor offense (if you’re chasing around the best player in Pac-10 history for the entire game, you just might lose your legs on your outside shot). 

The X factor has got be Alexis Gray-Lawson.  With Vital likely drawing the task of shutting down Wiggins, AGL has to pick up the slack on the offensive end.  Stanford will try to sag and take away Hampton and Walker inside, which they did extremely effectively in the game at Maples, so AGL has to knock down the open looks when she gets them.  When Stanford defends the perimeter shot, Alexis needs to penetrate and get the ball to our big guns inside.  It’s unfair to ask Vital to take away Wiggins and hit 40% from the outside so another guard needs to step up on offense, and Cal has no one better than Alexis Gray-Lawson.

Having led the Pac-10 for almost the entire season, and by making the conference championship game for the first time ever, anything less than a sweet-sixteen appearance will be disappointing.  Reaching the elite-eight (and likely knocking off a top 10 team to do it) will be gravy (and good tasting, rich gravy at that) on a historic season.  If you’ve got a free evening, head over to the HP Pavilion in San Jose for the and let’s do everything we can to make it a home game.   And oh yeah…

[Swear Redacted] Stanford and their wanton Tree!  Go Bears!