Women topple Pac-10 powers

Chris Richards Arizona Daily Wildcat UA forward Adia Barnes (30) plays a little defense in Tuesday night's victory over Pac-10 powerhouse Stanford. The Wildcats beat the Cardinal 91-90 with a last-second basket.

You can say Monday night's win was the biggest in the program's history.

Or you could say the win cements Arizona as a big-time contender for its first-ever Pacific 10 Conference title.

Or you could even say that UA has vaulted itself into the top five or six programs nationally.

But what is perhaps most important is that the Wildcats played as a team.

When starters Adia Barnes and Marte Alexander sat with foul trouble, Mikko Giordano stepped in.

When Lisa Griffith and Monika Crank left the game, Reshea Bristol, Felecity Willis and DeAngela Minter ran the show.

No matter the situation, UA head coach Joan Bonvicini could look down her bench and put someone in who could get the job done.

Against Stanford, UA had six players play more than 20 minutes. Seven players played more than 20 minutes in UA's win over then-No. 7 Washington on Saturday.

"Today, everybody contributed," Bonvicini said after a 31-point blow out over the Huskies. "That was a huge key for the game."

"When we play as a team, we can beat anyone," Bristol said just moments after hitting the shot of her life to break Stanford's 48-game conference winning streak at the buzzer in front of 3,010 at McKale Center.

Giordano agreed, adding that playing together defined the Wildcats as a team.

"Every game you get into a funk," she said. "But we have faith in our teammates."

When asked if any team in the country could beat Arizona when the Wildcats are firing on all cylinders, Alexander's response was automatic.

"No. And that's not cocky, it's just confidence," she said.

And why shouldn't they be confident? The Wildcats soared to No. 10 in the country with Minter, Griffith and Crank starting at the guard spots. Bristol was playing less than ten minutes per game.

But when Minter went down with an illness, Bonvicini was forced to start Bristol, a redshirt freshman.

Aside from setting a new career-high against the Cardinal, Bristol grabbed four rebounds and dished out five assists.

And when she wasn't dishing the ball, she hit her shots from the perimeter, including nailing four three-pointers.

Perhaps even more amazing is the poise Bristol showed when the pressure was on.

Down by two with 2:07 to play, Bristol took a pass from Barnes and launched a three to put UA up, 87-86.

Then, after Stanford's Christina Batastini put the Cardinal up by one with 16 seconds to play, Barnes took the ball into the lane but was stopped by Kristin Folkl, Stanford's two-sport standout.

Barnes lost her dribble but found Bristol streaking along the three point line and got her the ball.

Despite having Batastini in her face, Bristol took a dribble to the left and let the winning shot fly.

"Adia got me the ball and I looked over at the scorer's table and saw that there was only 1.8 seconds left. From there, I took a dribble and shot it," she said, "We work on it every day in practice. I just decided to take the shot. I'm just glad our seniors had a chance to go out winners against Stanford."

Bristol also showed some maturity when asked how she was adapting to the starting role.

"I like it fine," she said. "I can be a starter or come off the bench, just as long as I can be a spark plug."

Along with the arrival of Bristol as an extra scoring threat, the Wildcats have developed something else that should be important through the rest of the season -ęsolid interior defense.

In the win over Washington, Arizona held the returning Pac-10 leader in rebounding, Amber Hall, to just 13 points on four-of-14 shooting and more importantly, only three boards - nine below her 12.6 per game average.

Against Stanford, senior forward Olympia Scott was held to the same totals, 13 points and three rebounds. She was averaging 19.3 points and 8.5 rebounds.

"She was not going to get the board," Bonvicini said about playing Hall. "If someone else gets it, fine, but she's not going to get it."

As it turned out, it was the Wildcats who got the boards, out rebounding the Huskies by 10.