On Thursday, #3 Stanford women’s basketball defeated Morgan State 91-36 at Maples Pavilion in their opening game of the season. Stanford junior forward Francesca Belibi paced the Cardinal with 12 points and 4 rebounds on 5-6 shooting from the field while Lexie Hull (11 points), Hannah Jump (11 points), Kiki Iriafen (10 points), and Cameron Brink (10 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 blocks) also finished in double figures. Junior guard Adia Brisker led the way for the Bears with 22 points and 4 rebounds. Stanford improves to 1-0 on the season while Morgan State falls to 0-2.
“Well first of all, it’s great seeing all of you in person,” Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer said in her opening remarks. “So thank you so much for coming to the game and for anyone that is on the Zoom, we really appreciate you covering our team and it’s just really fun to be back in Maples with fans even if it is a 3:00 game. But we’re really excited.
“I think that this is a great first game for us. I think this team gave our team a little bloody nose and then our team responded. Our first quarter was great, our third was great, and then I think we had a letup in the second quarter, but we got it back it together. We did a good job from the 3-point line obviously. That’s a great percentage. We’re excited about that. But I think we have to do a better job of not sending a team to the free throw line and taking care of the basketball.”
Stanford got out to an 11-3 lead with 5:09 to go in the 1st quarter. Haley Jones (5 points) and Cameron Brink (4 points) were off to a hot start. Morgan State was shooting an icy 1-6 from the field.
Stanford would close the quarter out on a 14-0 run to lead 21-3 at the end of the 1st quarter. Lacie Hull got fouled attempting a 3-point heave right before the buzzer sounded and made all three foul shots. The 14-0 run was over the final 5:49 of the quarter.
Stanford would continue to expand their lead to go up 29-8 with 4:46 to go in the half. Haley Jones was up to 9 points and 4 rebounds. Stanford was shooting 10-18 (55.6%) from the field while Morgan State was shooting 1-19 (5.3%). Stanford’s defense was not allowing anything even remotely easy.
At the half, Stanford would lead 39-19. Haley Jones’ 9 points and 4 rebounds were leading the charge for the Cardinal while Lexie Hull was up to 8 points. Adia Brisker was leading Morgan State with 12 points.
Stanford opened the 3rd quarter on a 7-0 run to lead 46-19 with 6:53 to go in the quarter and would then add on another seven points to make it a 53-19 lead with 5:00 to go in the quarter. It was a 14-0 run by the Cardinal to open the second half as Lexie Hull was up to 11 points on 3-4 shooting from the field.
Stanford ended the quarter on a beautiful sequence involving Francesca Belibi stealing the ball on the inbounds around half court and finding Hannah Jump for a 3-pointer to beat the buzzer. As a result, Stanford would lead 63-22 at the end of the 3rd. Morgan State was shooting a hideous 3-30 (10.0%) from the field. Their foul shooting is what accounted for most of their scoring production.
“Yeah, I mean, Fran did the work on defense, got the steal,” Jump said of that sequence. “I was there, I was open in the front court and she made the right read. Yeah, it was a great pass and great shot and it got us fired up and ready to go.”
With 4:43 to go, Stanford led 77-31. Belibi (12 points), Hull (11 points), Jump (11 points), and Brink were all in double figures. In the end, Stanford walked out with a 91-36 win. Just an all-around dominating win. The 1st quarter (21-3) and 3rd quarter (24-3) were especially dominating for Stanford.
Stanford opened up both halves perfectly and aside from a 2nd quarter that was a little sloppy, it was a smooth opening game for the Cardinal. The only real downside from this game was 6th year guard Anna Wilson going down with an injury and not returning to the game. It is unclear what her status is going forward.
“I think we got great some contributions from different people,” VanDerveer said. “Like Kiki came in, she’s just learning what we’re doing. But she listened and did what we needed to do. We did a nice job from the free throw line, Hannah, Lexie, shot looked great. But we gotta take care of the basketball and that was the main thing that our team took away from that and play defense without fouling…when we’re up after a great third quarter and we’re up, I don’t want anyone getting hurt. I’m disappointed that Anna kinda left the game with an injury. Some of it is, we’re not the type of team that, we’re gonna play five and six and seven people. We’re not going to do it. So, if you’re out there, you gotta be really focused on doing the right thing.”
Up next for Stanford will be a home game against #14 Texas on Sunday. That game will tipoff at 12:00 PM PT on ESPN and Varsity Network Radio.