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Apr 1, 2008 8:34 am US/Eastern
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Lady Terps Won't Be Going To Final 4 This Year
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) ―
Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer pulled Candice Wiggins aside to make sure her star wasn't feeling uneasy or nervous.
"She says, 'I'm not nervous,"' VanDerveer said. "And I said, 'well Candice, we want to play more. We don't want this to be our last game."'
Wiggins and the rest of her Stanford teammates got VanDerveer's message. And if Wiggins keeps up this level of play, the Cardinal may have two more games in Tampa at the Final Four.
Wiggins put together perhaps the best performance in her stellar career on The Farm, scoring 41 points and leading second-seeded Stanford past No. 1 seed Maryland 98-87 in the Spokane Regional final on Monday night.
Playing with a swagger and confidence bred from being denied a No. 1 seed in the tournament, the Cardinal are back in the Final Four for the first time in 11 years.
They will face either Connecticut or Rutgers in the national semifinals in Tampa.
"This team is special," Wiggins said. "I'm not surprised. We knew we had a special team."
Wiggins is the first player in tournament history with two games of 40 points or more, following her career-best 44-point outburst against UTEP in the second round last week.
"We have had some great teams, we have had some great individual players, but I don't know that there's ever been anyone that has done more for their team than Candice does, in so many ways," VanDerveer said. "I'm just really happy for her and really happy for our team to have this opportunity."
Stanford won its 22nd straight game, and will be the first Final Four team from West of the Rockies since the Cardinal's appearance in 1997. It will be Stanford's seventh Final Four trip, and the Cardinal matched a school record with their 34th win of the season.
Wiggins was the standout, but she got plenty of help, and needed it to hold off Maryland's Kristi Toliver and her career-high 35 points.
Struggling JJ Hones, who had made just 4 of 16 shots in the tournament before Monday, scored a career-high 23 points, including four 3-pointers. And freshman forward Kayla Pedersen had 15 points, seven assists and six rebounds, as the duo helped make up for a tough night for Jayne Appel, Stanford's second-leading scorer who was held to 11 points.
"I felt like people might have been sleeping on me," Hones said. "I felt like it was kind of my duty to make shots."
Even while Appel was struggling on offense, it was the defense she and Pedersen played on Crystal Langhorne that was critical for the Cardinal.
Langhorne, the ACC player of the year, only managed six shots and finished with 13 points. She had scored 28 points in the Terrapins' regional semifinal win over Vanderbilt.
Two years after winning the national title, Maryland's roller-coaster season -- that included coach Brenda Frese having twin boys in February -- ended at 33-4.
"Sometimes it's just not your day," Frese said. "You have to give credit where credit is due and I thought that Stanford did a tremendous job."
Wiggins had failed in two previous regional finals as a freshman and sophomore. She provided problems for the Terrapins all over the court, whether hitting step-back 3-pointers or going between defenders in the lane.
She made 10 of 22 shots, including five 3s, and was 16 of 19 at the free-throw line.
"They were just so hard to stop," Maryland's Laura Harper said. "They were all playing with confidence. Everything was working."
It was Wiggins who ignited the Cardinal's decisive run early in the second half. Toliver's 3-pointer got the Terrapins within 56-51 with 14:50 left, the closest they had been since trailing 41-38 late in the first half.
Wiggins answered with a catch-and-shoot 3, and after a Maryland miss, Rosalyn Gold-Onwude, scoreless at the time, hit Stanford's 11th 3-pointer of the night.
Appel then blocked Harper on defense, and put back Pedersen's miss for a 13-point Cardinal advantage. Pedersen then capped the spurt with a three-point play, yet another moment when the Cardinal's role players came through.
Maryland made one final charge. Toliver scored nine straight points to pull Maryland within single digits at 79-72 following a 3 with 6:19 to play.
Wiggins answered with a 3 from the top of the arc moments later.
Now Wiggins is on her way to the Final Four, completing one of the accomplishments missing on her resume at Stanford.
"I knew this wasn't going to be my last game," she said.
(© 2008 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)