When the bracket for the NCAA Tournament is announced next Monday, Stanford head coach Tara VanDerveer hopes the Pac-12 isn’t penalized for having so many strong teams.

That is, she thinks the league deserves a No. 1 seed but isn’t sure it will get it.

Oregon, the regular-season champion, probably would have gotten a top seed if it had won the Pac-12 tournament. Instead, VanDerveer’s Cardinal, who had absorbed 40-point walloping a month earlier, knocked off the Ducks 64-57 in Sunday’s final.

“I’m feeling that the NCAA committee in some ways is going to punish the Pac-12 because we won,” VanDerveer said Monday. “We play in the best league and should have seven teams in (the NCAA Tournament), and we should have a 1-seed, whether that’s Oregon or us.”

In addition to those two teams, the conference is expected to land at-large berths for Oregon State, UCLA, Arizona State and Cal. VanDerveer thinks Arizona also deserves one thanks mainly to Aari McDonald, the conference’s leading scorer.

The Cardinal (28-4) will have had two days off before getting back to work Wednesday. They are riding a wave of momentum after winning their past nine games and held Oregon to nearly 30 points fewer than their season average.

“I thought the tone of the game was set on the first play with Maya (Dodson) blocked (Ruthy) Hebert’s shot,” VanDerveer said. “Our team had a lot of energy. There was no stopping them.”

She pointed out that when Stanford lost to Oregon 88-48 on Feb. 10, it made just 5 of 22 3-point tries, but on Sunday, it was the Ducks who were ice cold from distance (6-for-22).

“They really live on their 3-point shooting,” she said. “Sometimes shooting and scoring are a little bit contagious. They had a bad day. Our team had to be totally locked in (defensively), and they were.”

In a season-high 27 minutes, junior guard Anna Wilson “gave us a great spark,” she said, defending All-America Sabrina Ionescu after Lacie Hull got into foul trouble and Lexie Hull struggled.

“Anna came in and worked really hard on Ionescu. I know she still got points (27), but she’s just tough to guard,” VanDerveer said. “She basically sent us home last year” with 36 points in the Pac-12 championship game.

Although Wilson made just 1 of 7 shots against Oregon, she’s “a lot better shooter than her numbers show,” VanDerveer said. “When we played Ohio State last year in Las Vegas, she made 7 of 8 3s (in an overtime loss). Maybe she just likes Las Vegas. We’ll just have to schedule more games there for Anna.”

One area in which the Cardinal have a big edge over most other Pac-12 teams is depth. VanDerveer thinks one reason for that is the team’s unselfishness.

“I don’t know whether to call it ‘old school’ or not,” she said. “A lot of players go to a place, and they want instant success. If they’re not the star or the starter, they hit the road.”

She didn’t mention Oregon, but the Ducks lost four players who transferred before this season.

Tom FitzGerald is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: tfitzgerald@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @tomgfitzgerald