If you’re keeping tally, notch mark number 17 into the count. That’s how many consecutive wins the No. 8 Stanford women’s basketball team has registered over this stretch of the season. The Cardinal dominated UC-Santa Barbara last night with an 84-59 victory.

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Andrew Davis

Freshman guard JJ Hones goes for the basket against Oregon. The Cardinal steamrolled UC-Santa Barbara 84-59 last night in preparation for its match against No. 21 Cal on Sunday at Maples Pavilion.

While Stanford (19-3, 11-0 Pacific-10 Conference) opened the match up with a steady lead, the Gauchos (11-10, 5-2 Big West Conference) went on an 8-0 run with three minutes left in the first half to climb within three. But the Cardinal responded, sinking 32 unanswered points over the next 10 minutes of play. Senior forward Kristen Newlin attributed the scoring to motivation after the break.

“We knew that the first five minutes of the second half were crucial,” Newlin said. “We got things going. We wanted to get the ball inside, they [double-teamed], we kicked it out, and things were just falling for us.”

Junior guard Candice Wiggins, who led all scorers with 21 points, agreed that Stanford’s opportunity to regroup helped change the momentum.

“I think it was important that we got together, regrouped and refocused,” Wiggins said. “They were playing at a very fast pace, and we wanted to make sure that we didn’t get caught up in that. The key word of the half was definitely ‘poise.’”

Poise was seen primarily in the post, where senior Brooke Smith registered a double-double with 16 points and 10 rebounds; Newlin’s 10-point, nine-rebound appearance was only one board shy of a double-double. Wiggins noted that the paint players were the greatest influences in the game.

“I think our biggest advantage was our inside game,” Wiggins said. “They played four guards, so we were able to get it inside. [Smith] had some early foul trouble, but she was able to come back in the second half and really show why she’s one of the best post players in the country. And [Newlin] also stepped up; she stayed out of foul trouble, and got a bunch of rebounds.”

While freshman Jayne Appel added nine points and seven rebounds to the Cardinal’s lethal rotation of forwards, she struggled the most to limit her fouls. Appel left the game with five fouls in only 14 minutes of play. Wiggins believes the difficulty is merely a sign of Appel’s youth.

“I think that [Appel’s] foul trouble is just a learning experience,” Wiggins said. “I look back to my freshman year, and it seems like I was in foul trouble every single game. It’s just one of those things that you pick up and you learn. It’s not something that she can really concentrate on or think about because that would be more of a distraction. I don’t think it’s going to be a problem.”

Despite this minor chink in Stanford’s armor, the Gauchos’ leading scorer, center Jenna Green (14 points), could not find a way to match the rebounding prowess of Smith, Newlin and Appel. Stanford pulled down 44 rebounds compared to UCSB’s 25 — 15 of the 44 came as offensive boards.

The Cardinal also found success in transition. Wiggins said that running the court was “definitely another big advantage.” Newlin recognized Stanford’s ability to capitalize on its shots in transition.

“We knew that we wanted to run,” Newlin said. “We didn’t want to call a timeout, even though we were tired, because we knew that we could keep running and getting those easy layups. We’re always trying to look up the floor and get easy baskets on a breakaway with no defense.”

While an on-the-run offense helped to propel the Cardinal’s 32-point mid-game roll, scoring in that stretch alone was shared by seven different Stanford players. The Gauchos, on the other hand, did not display similar offensive balance. With four players scoring 12 or more points, UCSB received its remaining 7 points from only two bench players.

As Stanford prepares to return home and face No. 21 California at 1 p.m. on Sunday, the team again looks toward the leadership of its upperclassmen, as well as an even distribution of scoring. Wiggins says the Cardinal will look to draw upon the lessons of their long string of victories to find repeated successes in the future.

“We’ve got a long winning streak that we want to keep going,” Wiggins said. “We just want to be hungrier and not be satisfied with just winning.”