Past and Future Win for Stanford : Women’s West Regional: Senior Kaplan, freshman Folkl lead Cardinal to 81-71 victory over North Carolina.

Two players, one from Stanford’s past and another in its future, propelled the Cardinal into the women’s NCAA West Regional basketball championship game by overwhelming North Carolina on Thursday night.

Raising its record to 29-2, Stanford ran away with an 81-71 victory and will meet Purdue on Saturday night at Pauley Pavilion. The winner will advance to the Final Four the next weekend at Minneapolis.

The Cardinal played 10 players Thursday night before 4,078 at UCLA. But 6-foot-5 senior Anita Kaplan and 6-2 freshman Kristin Folkl were the most productive in the stretch drive, when the Pacific 10 champions were trying to hold off the defending national champions, who finished with a 30-5 record.

Kaplan, who played only four minutes in the first half, opened the second half by throwing down four eight- to 12-foot jump shots without a miss, jump-starting Stanford to an early second-half burst that produced a 50-39 lead.

Folkl, a freshman from St. Louis who scored 21 points, is bidding to play for NCAA champion volleyball--Stanford won the title last fall--and basketball teams in the same school year.

And she brought all her volleyball skills Thursday night, showing acrobatic body control close to the basket, scoring on follow shots, tip-ins and one-handed drives.

Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer substituted freely, sending fresh players at North Carolina throughout.

After Kaplan’s jump shots produced a 46-39 lead, the Cardinal went to Folkl. She made a fine play underneath for a 50-39 lead, then hit a turn-around jumper at short range for 54-44.

Stanford tried hard but never could bury North Carolina. Sophomore sprinter Marion Jones of Thousand Oaks, who scored 20 points, and Charlotte Smith, whose three-pointer at the final horn against Louisiana Tech gave the Tar heels the 1994 national championship, scored inside and from three-point range. Smith scored 13 points.

But they weren’t enough against a Stanford bench that seemed to stretch into the baseline seats.

And in the stretch, with their passes frequently being intercepted, the Tar Heels seemed to be wearing down.

In the first half, as Stanford built a 36-31 lead, Kaplan and 6-3 Rachel Hemmer, who also started on the 1992 national championship team, played only a combined 19 minutes, but the Cardinal still dominated North Carolina inside.

Folkl and another freshman, 6-2 Heather Owen, came off the bench and shut down North Carolina’s smaller inside players almost completely. Folkl scored 11 points in the middle one-third of the half.

Owen twice forced the Tar Heels into turnovers, one on a jump ball that brought her teammates off the bench in celebration.

The Cardinal soon made it a 32-22 lead with 4:02 left in the half.

Both teams shot poorly in the early going, with North Carolina apparently trying to put Stanford’s big inside players in foul trouble. Smith and Jones tried repeatedly to drive the lanes on Stanford, but the fouls were going the wrong way. They each had three fouls 7 1/2 minutes into the game.