Pac-12 tournament swan song: Look back at Stanford, Cal and other Bay Area highlights over the years
Stanford's thrilling 61-60 win over Cal in the 2015 women's championship game is one of the most memorable Bay Area moments in the history of the Pac-12 basketball tournaments.
A year from now, the Stanford and Cal men’s and women’s basketball teams will find themselves playing in the Atlantic Coast Conference tournaments.
But for one more time, beginning Wednesday, the Cardinal and Golden Bears will engage their Pac-12 rivals.
As usual, the Stanford women who are expected to challenge for the Pac-12 tournament championship. Top-seeded and second-ranked in the country, the Cardinal (26-4) will debut Thursday at 2:30 p.m. in a quarterfinal game at the MGM Garden Arena in Las Vegas.
No. 8 seed Cal (17-13) plays Washington State (16-14) on Wednesday at 2:30 p.m., with the winner advancing to face the regular-season champion Cardinal.
Featuring the likes of Nicole Powell and Candice Wiggins, Stanford has largely owned the women’s tournament, winning 15 of 22 titles since its inception in 2002 while compiling a sparkling record of 54-7 at the event. Oregon has won two women’s titles, and Cal has been shut out.
The Pac-12 men’s tournament, which gets under way a week from Wednesday at T-Mobile Arena in Vegas, has not been nearly so productive for the Bay Area teams.
Stanford won the 2004 title and Cal has come up empty in 26 tries, dating back to the first one in 1987. Arizona has won the event nine times, including the past two years, although two earlier championships later were vacated.
Here are a half-dozen special Pac-12 tournament memories:
2015: Cardinal women leave Bears heartbroken
The 2015 women’s title game produced the best tournament matchup of the Bay rivals, with top-seeded Stanford holding off a second-half rally by Cal to claim a 61-60 victory.
Stanford’s Taylor Greenfield scored a career-high 20 points and was named the tournament’s most outstanding player, but the Cardinal got a 40-minute test from its rival. Coach Tara VanDerveer called it “as rewarding a championship that I’ve ever sat up here and felt because we definitely had to scrap for it and battle.”
Even as Reshanda Gray, Cal’s Pac-12 Player of the Year, was held to six points and Brittany Boyd sat out 13 minutes after being elbowed in the face, the Bears nearly pulled off a comeback from eight points down in the second half.
“We took a punch literally and figuratively — our leader and point guard goes out with blood gushing — and everybody else rallies and that was something I’m proud of,” then Cal coach Lindsay Gottlieb said.
2004: Monty’s final season at Stanford
One week after Washington upset unbeaten Stanford, the Cardinal avenged the defeat with a 77-66 triumph in the title game. Matt Lottich scored 20 points and Josh Childress was voted most outstanding player as Stanford improved to 29-1.
“You take a great deal of pride if we should happen to go into the NCAA tournament as a No. 1 seed,” Cardinal head coach Mike Montgomery said. “It also means zippo starting next week.”
He was right. The top-seeded Cardinal was ousted by Alabama in the second round of the NCAA tournament. Montgomery left Stanford to become coach of the Warriors for two seasons before resurfacing at Cal in 2008.
2006: Leon Powe flexes his muscles
The Bears rode the broad shoulders of power forward Leon Powe, who scored 22 points and set a tournament record with 20 rebounds in a quarterfinal win over USC. The Oakland native then scored 41 points on 14-for-17 shooting and 13-for-18 from the foul line while playing 47 minutes in the Bears’ 91-87 double-overtime, late-night win vs. Oregon.
“He single-handedly carried us for damn near the whole night,” teammate Ayinde Ubaka said.
Likely exhausted, Bears lost 71-52 to top-seeded UCLA in the title game, but Powe was named most outstanding player after totaling 80 points — still the second-most in tournament history — and 34 rebounds.
2013: Seven in a row for the Cardinal women
Chiney Ogwumike totaled 51 points and a tournament-record 50 rebounds, but scored just three points in the title game, as Stanford beat UCLA 51-49 for seventh straight championship. Ogwumike won most outstanding player honors on the heels of big sister Nneka capturing the award three years in a row.
Cal lost to the Bruins in the second round but went on to its only appearance in the NCAA Final Four.
2011: Klay Thompson goes for 43 points
Just months before being drafted by the Warriors, Washington State’s Klay Thompson scored a still-standing tournament record 43 points in an 89-87 quarterfinal loss to rival Washington. Thompson showed off his Splash Brothers readiness by making eight 3-pointers, also a record that endures.
“Great player,” UW star Isaiah Thomas said. “Some shots he hit I was like, `Man, is that Kobe?’ ”
2020: Sabrina gets the last word
Stanford and Oregon dueled in the women’s title games three straight years, and East Bay prep legend Sabrina Ionescu was in the middle of all three. She scored 36 points as a sophomore in 2018, sparking the Ducks to a 77-57 rout of the Cardinal. “It was the Ionescu show today,” VanDerveer said.
Stanford squared things a year later, winning 64-57, despite 27 points from Ionescu. In 2020, the Ducks took Stanford apart, winning 88-56 behind 20 points and 12 assists from Ionescu, who was named most outstanding player for the second time in three years.
Four days later, just hours before Cal was scheduled to face UCLA in the Pac-12 men’s quarterfinals, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic shut it all down.