For nearly a decade and a half, Stanford women’s basketball has dominated Cal. The Cardinal has won 25 of its last 27 games against the cross-Bay rivals, routinely blowing out the Golden Bears while establishing themselves as the premier basketball program on the West Coast.

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Stanford has won 25 of its last 27 games against Cal, but the Golden Bears are an ever-improving team and the current Pac-10 leader. The Cardinal will not only play for revenge Saturday night, but for Pac-10 supremacy as well. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8406
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Stanford has won 25 of its last 27 games against Cal, but the Golden Bears are an ever-improving team and the current Pac-10 leader. The Cardinal will not only play for revenge Saturday night, but for Pac-10 supremacy as well.

But over the past couple of seasons, Cal has risen from the depths of the Pac-10 to become one of the conference’s premier teams. In their second matchup last year, Cal knocked off Stanford 72-57 at Maples Pavilion. The Cardinal will enter Saturday’s rivalry game looking to avenge that loss, one of the ugliest in recent memory.

The teams met on Feb. 4, 2007. Stanford, ranked No. 8 in the country, was 19-3 and undefeated in Pac-10 play. The Cardinal had beaten the Golden Bears 12 straight times, including an 87-75 victory less than a month earlier. Cal’s last victory over Stanford was in 2001.

In 2005, in fact, the Cardinal beat Berkeley by a combined 76 points in two games. Senior guard Candice Wiggins, then a freshman, was instrumental in both victories: she scored 18 points in an 88-53 win on Jan. 13 at Maples Pavilion, and added 24 points in a 91-50 victory on Feb. 11 in Berkeley.

But those Golden Bear teams were mediocre at best. After the 2005 season, when the team went 11-18, Cal fired coach Caren Horstmeyer and hired Richmond coach Joanne Boyle, who had unprecedented success with the Spiders, to replace her.

Boyle quickly turned the Golden Bears around: Cal went 18-12 in her first year, making the NCAA Tournament for the first time since 1993. Last season, the squad climbed its way into the national rankings with a final record of 23-9.

The Feb. 4 victory was not entirely unexpected: the previous month, Cal put up their highest point total against Stanford in 12 years, a feat even more impressive because it was done without forward/center Deanei Hampton, Cal’s leading scorer, who was serving a suspension.

“They’re big-time players, and this was without their best player,” Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said at the time. “They’re very, very good.” It took career nights from Wiggins (seven 3-pointers) and Krista Rappahahn (six baskets from behind the arc) for Stanford to hold off Cal.

All this set up the Golden Bears’ eventual win a month later.

And quite a victory it was: Cal held Stanford to just 26.6 percent shooting from the field, the lowest total in program history. The Cardinal led 31-30 at half time, but Hampton, back from her suspension, dominated in the second half, and finished with 22 points and 14 rebounds. Then-freshman point guard Natasha Vital added 19 points, including 10 from the foul line, for the Golden Bears, and dished out six assists.

Stanford was inept offensively: Wiggins went 5-for-14 from the field, and then-senior forward Brooke Smith, usually a reliable inside presence, shot only 5-for-12, including 0-4 from beyond the arc. They were the only two players to score in double-digits for the Cardinal, but they both fouled out. To add injury to insult, starting guard J.J. Hones tore her ACL just seconds into the game, shelving her for the season.

With one starter out and the others suffering offensively, VanDerveer turned to her bench. She used 11 players in the game (Boyle, by contrast, only used seven) but she found no relief: Cissy Pierce and Clare Bodensteiner went 1-for-10 and 1-for-9 from the field, respectively. As a team, the Cardinal shot 17-for-64, including a dismal 6-for-35 from three-point range.

Cal left the Farm with a decisive victory that on its own, despite a first-round NCAA Tournament exit, was enough to call their 2006-2007 season a success.

The Golden Bears come to Stanford this Saturday ranked No. 8 in the country, just one spot below the No. 7 Cardinal. Cal is undefeated in Pac-10 play, while Stanford has two losses. With a win this weekend, Berkeley will be in the Pac-10 driver’s seat for the rest of this season.

One of the most lopsided rivalries in women’s basketball has suddenly become competitive, and the stakes are as high as ever.