COLLEGE BASKETBALL / NCAA TOURNAMENT : Anteater Women to Face a Tough Stanford Team

A lot of Colleen Matsuhara’s hunches have been right recently, and the NCAA selection committee proved her instincts correct again Sunday when they matched the UC Irvine women’s team against Stanford in the first round of the NCAA women’s basketball tournament.

After the Anteaters beat the University of the Pacific to win the Big West tournament title Saturday, the Irvine coach said she had a feeling their first-ever appearance in the NCAAs would come against the Cardinal.

The Anteaters will play Stanford (26-2), second-seeded in the West and the top-seeded team in the sub-regional, on Thursday in Palo Alto. The Cardinal has the fifth-longest home winning streak in the nation, with 15 consecutive victories at Maples Pavilion. Irvine (19-10) is seeded 15th in the West.

No. 7 Southern Mississippi and No. 10 Southern Methodist also will play Thursday and the winners meet Saturday.

“I think we have depth, size and versatility,” Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer said, “so I feel good about it, but not real good. I don’t think it’s necessarily a given that (top-seeded) Stanford, Vanderbilt, North Carolina and Purdue will be in the West final.

“Irvine has size, they’re athletic and they finished the season very strong.”

OK, VanDerveer hasn’t had time to look at the tapes very closely, so two out of three isn’t bad.

Allah-mi Basheer, a 6-foot-2 center and the Big West tournament most valuable player, is the only Irvine starter taller than 5-10. But Basheer, who had three steals and two blocks in the victory over Pacific, is providing solid inside defense. Point guard Tamera Thomas, who had 10 steals in three tournament games, is also defending and handling the ball exceptionally well.

And the Anteaters have won seven of their last nine games, so, as Matsuhara likes to say, anything is possible.

But the Cardinal has three players scoring in double figures, 6-2 sophomore forward Kate Starbird (16.4 per game), 6-5 senior center Anita Kaplan (13.9), and 5-8 guard guard Kate Paye (9.6). Starbird and Paye are each averaging 43% from three-point range. Four players are averaging five or more rebounds and 10 are averaging 11 or more minutes.

“They’re a very big, physical team,” Matsuhara said. “They score inside, they have very good outside shooters, they have a great transition game and what makes them so tough is that they absolutely power the boards.

“I’m very surprised they weren’t the top seed in the West.”

Not unexpected were the other top-seeded teams, No. 1-ranked Connecticut, Tennessee and Colorado. But the No. 1 given to Vanderbilt raised some eyebrows.

Vanderbilt’s No. 1 was of particular surprise to Pacific 10-champion Stanford. The fifth-ranked Cardinal (26-2) had anticipated being No. 1 in the West but wound up No. 2 behind Vanderbilt (26-6), which upset Tennessee in the Southeastern Conference tournament.

Three Southland teams made the NCAA tournament.

USC wound up in Nashville, and San Diego State will play at home in first-round games this week. All were placed in the West Regional.

Cheryl Miller’s Trojans, who finished 10-8 (18-9 overall) and in fifth place in the Pac-10, were assigned to Vanderbilt’s bracket and play Memphis (21-7) on Friday.

San Diego State (24-5) had an 18-game winning streak snapped by Utah, 64-57, in the Western Athletic Conference tournament title game Saturday. The Aztecs play Montana (25-6) on Thursday.

The March 23-25 regional sites: UCLA (West), Connecticut (East), Tennessee (Mideast) and Drake (Midwest). The Final Four is April 1-2 at Minneapolis’ Target Center.

The NCAA selected half of the Pac-10 teams: Stanford, Washington, Oregon State, Oregon and USC. Only the SEC, with seven teams, had more.

Defending national champion North Carolina (28-4) was placed in the West. North Carolina beat Louisiana Tech on a last-second shot in last year’s championship game at Richmond.

Tar Heel Coach Sylvia Hatchell said she hopes her team can deliver a message:

“The ACC credibility just isn’t there (in the NCAA’s view) and we’ll use our seeding as a rallying cry. . . . We’ll go out there and prove something.”

Louisiana Tech (26-4) was seeded No. 2 the East, behind Connecticut.

Last year’s two other Final Four teams were Alabama and Purdue. Alabama (20-8) was seeded fourth in the East, and Purdue (21-7) fourth in the West.

USC tailed off markedly in the home stretch of the Pac-10 season, playing .500 basketball since a 72-52 loss to Stanford on Feb. 23. In USC’s 92-59 loss at Oregon State on Saturday, the Trojans played without two starters, Jody Anton, who was injured, and point guard Audrey Gomez, who suspended one game for violating a team rule.