Stanford women head to NCAA regional semifinals after ripping Florida Gulf Coast 90-70

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At Christmas, Stanford was 6-6 and had lost not only to heavyweights like UConn and Ohio State but also a pint-sized Western Illinois team.

The Cardinal women have come a long way. Ranked 15th in the country, they are just two wins from going back to the Final Four for the 14th time in program history.

They had to fend off an unorthodox team, three-point-crazy Florida Gulf Coast on Monday night, in the second round of the NCAA Tournament. They did so with gusto, taking control with a 33-point first quarter and finishing with a 90-70 win at Maples Pavilion.

Alanna Smith scored 28 points, including 13 in the first quarter, and Brittany McPhee added 17. The fourth-seeded Cardinal shut off the Eagles’ driving lanes and outrebounded their much shorter opponents by a whopping 52-18.

The Cardinal (24-10) will play top-seeded Louisville on Friday in Lexington, Ky. Baylor, the No. 2 seed, meets sixth-seeded Oregon State in the other game. The regional final is Sunday for a trip to the Final Four.

“We’re going back to Lexington for the third time in a row,” head coach Tara VanDerveer said. “We love Lexington.”

True to the words on their warm-up jerseys, “Raining 3’s,” the Eagles (31-5) broke a national three-point record. They hit 17-of-47 three-point attempts, giving them 431 for the season and breaking the NCAA record of 424 set by Sacramento State in 2014-15.

Stanford’s bench reacts to their team's play against Florida Gulf Coast during the second quarter of an NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship game, on Monday, March 19, 2018 in Stanford, Calif. Stanford’s bench reacts to their team's play against Florida Gulf Coast during the second quarter of an NCAA Division I Women's Basketball Championship game, on Monday, March 19, 2018 in Stanford, Calif. Photo: D. Ross Cameron, Special To The Chronicle Buy photo Photo: D. Ross Cameron, Special To The Chronicle Image 1 of / 7 Caption Close Stanford women head to NCAA regional semifinals after ripping Florida Gulf Coast 90-70 1 / 7 Back to Gallery

“We knew we needed to be out on them,” McPhee said. “We knew they were going to make threes. That was OK as long as they were taking hard threes, not wide-open ones by their best shooters.”

Stanford is not a great offensive team by the program’s lofty standards. But it’s an outstanding defensive team.

It entered the game allowing just 55 points a game at home this season on 33 percent shooting from the field and 22 percent from long range. It limited the Eagles to 37 percent shooting overall, although they hit 36 percent of their long-distance shots.

“Great effort by Stanford,” Eagles head coach Karl Smesko said. “They look like a team that has a real good chance of getting to the Final Four.”

DiJonai Carrington scored 14 points and Kiana Williams 12 for Stanford, which blocked seven shots. Smith and Kaylee Johnson had 12 rebounds each for the Cardinal. The Eagles were at a drastic height disadvantage, with no player taller than 5-foot-11.

China Dow, a 5-foot-8 backup guard but the Eagles’ second leading scorer, hit six threes in the second half to keep them in striking distance. She finished with 23 points, with Austrian guard Lisa Zderadicka adding 16 and Nasrin Ulel 10.

Stanford’s height, particularly the 6-4 Smith and 6-3 Johnson, “affected us a lot on going to the lane,” Dow said. “I wish I would have grown overnight, but it didn’t work out that way.”

The Cardinal enjoyed their highest total in any quarter this season in running to a 33-17 lead after one. Smith hit all of her six shots from the field.

“We had more defensive breakdowns in the first quarter than we had the whole game against Missouri” in the first round, Smesko said “You dig that kind of a hole, you’re pressing to get back in the game the entire time.”

As Smith saw it, “We all had the same mind-set of being aggressive. We said to each other: ‘This is it. This is our last game at Maples. We need to show it.’”