SEATTLE – Kiana Williams scored 24 points and No. 16 Stanford advanced to its 15th Pac-12 Tournament final with a 58-46 win over Arizona State on Saturday night.
The No. 2 seed Cardinal (22-9) will play top-seeded and No. 6 Oregon (29-4) in the championship game on Sunday at 6 p.m. on ESPN2. Stanford beat the Ducks in Eugene 78-65 on Feb. 4 in the only other meeting between the teams this season. Stanford, which has won 12 of the 16 Pac-12 Tournaments, is 12-2 all-time in the final.
Williams scored nearly half of her team's points on 81.8 percent shooting (9-of-11), including a season-high six 3-pointers, tied for the third most in a single game in Pac-12 Tournament history.
Kianna Ibis made a jumper to give Arizona State (21-12) a 2-0 lead, but the Sun Devils missed their next nine field-goal attempts and 13 of their next 14 as Stanford used a 27-5 run to open a 20-point lead.
Williams capped the spurt in a one-minute span when she hit a three, a jumper and then another 3-pointer to make it 27-7 midway through the second quarter. The Cardinal led by double figures the rest of the way.
Stanford's stud freshman outscored ASU with a personal 11-4 run in the third quarter that had the crowd of nearly 7,000 rising to their feet. Williams curled around a DiJonai Carrington screen, rejected a Kaylee Johnson screen and then a nailed a triple in front of the Cardinal bench to make it 37-23.
Kiara Russell hits two free throws for the Sun Devils before Williams made a layup and then pulled up in transition and drilled another 3-pointer from the right wing with 5:03 on the clock. Ibis converted a minute later and then it was Williams again. Carrington drove baseline and whipped the ball out to Alanna Smith at the wing. Smith passed to Williams at the top a good four feet behind the arc and when Robbi Ryan didn't come out to challenge she drained another 3-pointer, her sixth and final of the game.
Williams would check out with three minutes to go in the third and Stanford up 47-27. She rested the final 13 minutes and scored her 24 in just 22 minutes of action.
Smith added 13 points for Stanford, which moved its record to 42-4 at the conference tournament.
DiJonai Carrington hit back-to-back jumpers to give Stanford its biggest lead at 56-30 with eight minutes left before the Sun Devils closed on a 16-2 run.
Russell led ASU with 12 points and Charnea Johnson-Chapman scored 10.
Arizona State scored just three points in the first quarter and 18 in the first half, a both season lows for the Sun Devils. ASU also made a season-low 13 shots and its .310 field goal percentage was its second-worst of the year. In its first two Pac-12 Tournament games this weekend, the Cardinal is giving up 52.5 points on 28.6 percent shooting (28-of-98). Its opponents have also combined to go 5-of-31 from 3-point range (.161).
Williams' 24 points were her second-most of the season. She is 10-of-15 from deep (.667) in Seattle and averaging 21.0 points per game. Stanford's Candice Wiggins owns the tournament record with 14 made 3-pointers in 2007 on 25 attempts.
