CLAIRE C. LAURENCE/Arizona Daily Wildcat Shawntinice Polk, left, Aimee Grzyb and Katrina Lindner, celebrate during Arizona's Pac-10 tournament victory over Oregon Saturday night in HP Pavilion in San Jose, Calif.

Senior scores 24 in hometown return

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Aimee Grzyb saved her best performances for home.

In front of dozens of family and friends, the UA senior guard set new personal bests with a career-high six 3-pointers - a Pac-10 Tournament record - and 24 points Saturday in the Wildcat women's hoops team's 81-58 rout of No. 7 seed Oregon State.

The San Jose, Calif., native hit four more treys and scored 14 in Arizona's 77-55 trouncing of No. 6 seed Washington yesterday in San Jose's HP Pavilion.

The wins move the Wildcats (24-7, 14-4 Pacific 10 Conference) into the Pac-10 Tournament championship game for the second straight season. The Wildcats face top-seeded Stanford tonight at 7:30 on Fox Sports Net in a rematch of last year's tournament final.

"I'm a senior and it could be my last game, and I don't want it to be, so I'm going to do whatever I can to help the team," said Grzyb, who was a combined 10-of-16 from beyond the arc this weekend.

"It feels great. I'm lucky that a lot of those shots went in, but I was open, and I'm going to take those shots. I'm happy at home."

"She really opened things up," head coach Joan Bonvicini said after the OSU game. "Six 3s - that's not bad."

Arizona dominated both opponents in the second half. The Wildcats outscored the Huskies (17-12, 9-9) 45-30 and limited them to 30 percent shooting from the field in the second. They doubled up OSU (15-14, 8-10) 47-23 in the final 20 minutes, holding the Beavers to 23 percent (7 of 30) from the floor.

Arizona out-rebounded OSU 27-13 in the second and grabbed 22 boards to UW's 15 in the second half of Sunday's game.

"Once they get the flow of the game in the first half, they buckle down a little more," Bonvicini said after yesterday's win. "I think we can do a little bit better job of being tougher defensively in the first half, but we really came out again (in the second)."

Washington never led yesterday as the Wildcats turned a 37-30 halftime lead into a 59-42 advantage following a 3 by Grzyb with under eight minutes left.

After UW cut Arizona's lead to 14, Grzyb deflated the Huskies with another deep ball to put the Wildcats up 70-53 with 3:13 left.

"It's great when Aimee steps up," said sophomore center Shawntinice Polk. "She's talked about it: She wants to go out with a bang. She wants to win a championship. No place better to do it than her hometown."

Polk tallied 19 points and 10 rebounds yesterday, and sophomore guard Natalie Jones added 11 points, seven rebounds and seven assists for the Wildcats, who are a win shy of matching their all-time high for victories in a season.

"(Arizona is) a great defensive team," said Washington senior guard Giuliana Mendiola, who had a game-high 24 points. "They have their players all over the court. They made it difficult for us the whole game.

"Arizona's a great team, and they just took it to us."

Against the Beavers, Arizona scored 18 unanswered points in an eight-minute span to turn a two-point deficit into a 58-42 lead with under 10 minutes to play.

"We wore them down a little bit, and I think our defense was mixing some things up," said Bonvicini of the Beavers. "We just get that big basket and it breaks their spirit a little bit."

"Give a lot of credit to Arizona. They really started to attack the basket quite a bit," said Oregon State head coach Judy Spoelstra.

Polk scored 16 of her 22 points in the second half against OSU. Jones notched 10 points and 10 rebounds for her first career double-double, and junior guard Dee-Dee Wheeler contributed 10 points, nine boards, seven assists and four steals in a game-high 36 minutes.

Stanford beat California and UCLA this weekend to earn a meeting with the Wildcats in the tournament final. The Cardinal beat Arizona 59-49 in last year's title game.

"Anytime you've got to go back-to-back, and now for a third one - that's going to be hard," Bonvicini said. "But we were here a year ago and we know what it takes, and we'll be ready for the challenge."