November 19, 1998
STANFORD, Calif. (AP) - Illinois became the latest team to shatterStanford's aura of invincibility in its home arena.
Susan Blauser scored 20 points and Melissa Parker had 17 as 24th-rankedIllinois defeated Stanford 76-58 Thursday night, sending the Cardinal to theirsecond straight loss at Maples Pavilion after a 59-game winning streak.
In their last game at Maples, the Cardinal were beaten by underdog Harvard71-67 in the first round of last season's NCAA tournament.
"This is unacceptable. We don't lose here," Stanford point guard MilenaFlores said. "I know the coach is going to make changes and we all know theyare necessary."
Tauja Catchings added 14 points for Illinois, which won a season opener onthe road for just the second time in eight tries. Blauser also had 18 ofIllinois' 48 rebounds.
"As you can imagine, this is a great win for us," said Illinois coachTheresa Grentz, who has led her team to consecutive 20-win seasons. "We'retrying to build a program to get up there with the Tennessees and theStanfords. Stanford is obviously very young, and they played like it."
The Cardinal, who fell out of the rankings for the first time in 11 yearsafter season-opening losses to Arkansas and Duke last week, began a season 0-3for the first time in the program's 25-year history.
All three losses have been to ranked teams.
"Stanford has a great nucleus of players and they will definitely beback," Grentz added. "They didn't exactly start the season by playing thelttle sisters of the poor, you know."
It won't get any easier for Stanford, which lost four starters tograduation. The Cardinal plays host to top-ranked Purdue on Sunday.
"I thought we played really hard. Unfortunately, we had major executionproblems," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. "On offense, our shootingpercentage was absymal (28.6 percent). This was probably because our peoplewere not recognizing what they were supposed to be doing out there."
Carolyn Moos had 22 points to lead the Cardinal but also had seventurnovers. Flores added 11 points and Karesa Granderson had 10 but freshmanLindsey Yamasaki had an off night, hitting just one of nine shots from thefield.
After trailing most of the night, Stanford pulled to 56-55 when ChristinaBatastini converted a three-point play with 8:05 left. However, the Cardinalwent without a basket for the next five minutes.
In the meantime, Dawn Vana banked a hook shot to start a 9-0 spurt thatcarried Illinois to its biggest lead to that point, 65-55.
Illinois had a five-point lead at halftime and went up 33-28 on Catchings'baseline jumper with 17:41 remaining. But Stanford came back with a 9-0 run totake its first lead of the game, 43-39.
Flores started the flurry, hitting a running 15-foot jumper. Moos capped itwith a driving layup and a pair of free throws.
Illinois quickly caught up, getting a 3-pointer from Parker and a couplefree throws from Blauser.