HONOLULU, Hawai'i – Lili Thompson scored 11 of her team-high 15 points in the second half, but the No. 5 Cardinal shot just 31 percent on the afternoon and dropped its first game at the Rainbow Wahine Shootout in Honolulu to No. 11 North Carolina on Friday, 70-54.
The result, Stanford's third in the last four games against a ranked opponent, moves the Cardinal's record to 3-2. Stanford never led, but pulled within five, 39-34, midway through the second half on a Thompson 3-pointer. After that bucket with 13:41 to go, the Tar Heels would go on a 23-6 run to open up a 22-point gap with 5:13 to play.
"I was disappointed in our effort," Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer said. "First of all I think that North Carolina has an excellent team. They have a lot of weapons, they have a great inside game and they shot really well from the outside. They were hitting perimeter shots and had a solid inside-outside game going. I think they really exposed us in a lot of ways."
Thompson's long-range bomb started an extended drought from the floor for Stanford, which wouldn't again convert a field goal until Thompson herself made a layup in transition with 9:01 left.
Latifah Coleman scored a career-high 19 points and Xylina McDaniel added 15 for North Carolina.
Stephanie Mavunga posted 10 and eight rebounds for the Tar Heels (5-0), who avenged a nine-point loss to the Cardinal (3-2) in the Elite Eight of the NCAA tournament last April. Stanford had been 3-0 all-time against UNC with all previous meetings coming in the postseason. The Cardinal had also entered the weekend a perfect 18-0 in preseason tournaments in Hawai'i.
Coleman also had six rebounds and six assists. She made seven of her 12 shots from the field, including 4-of-6 on 3-pointers, and scored 14 of her points in the second half.
A stagnant first 20 minutes saw numerous misses, as the two teams combined to go just 15-of-66 from the floor (22.7 percent). But the Tar Heels converted nearly 61 percent of their attempts in the second half to post the 16-point win. It was Stanford's largest margin of defeat to someone other than Connecticut since a 91-71 loss at the hands of DePaul on Dec. 16, 2010.
After converting on just four of their 17 shots from behind the arc in the opening stanza, the Tar Heels made 8-of-12 from downtown after intermission. For a nearly seven-minute stretch in the middle of the second half, North Carolina made six-in-a-row from deep. Coleman's triple with 6:52 to go capped the spurt, which gave UNC a 19-point advantage, 57-38.
"Our defense in the second half wasn't as good -- our defense in the first half was better," VanDerveer added. "Our offense was very stagnant and we just need more people contributing. We don't have much of an inside game right now, which we have to work on. We weren't moving the ball as well as needed to and we were flat and we can't play that way."
Kaylee Johnson contributed six points and nine rebounds for the Cardinal, which was out-rebounded 47-32.
Stanford continues the tournament tomorrow against the host Rainbow Wahine at 6:30 p.m. PT/4:30 p.m. HT in a game streamed via BigWest.TV.