A three-week winter break could not have been more up-and-down for the No. 7 Stanford women’s basketball team.

It was a tale of two halves, one in the last days of 2007 and one in the first days of 2008. The Cardinal stormed out of the gate after two weeks off for final exams, demolishing No. 8 Baylor 87-63, a remarkable accomplishment considering Baylor’s pedigree and the reputation of finals for disrupting teams’ focus. An away win at New Mexico followed before Stanford exorcised 10 years worth of demons with its gritty victory over then-No. 1 Tennessee.

Then, after cakewalks against Washington State and Washington, the new year came with a pair of road losses to UCLA and USC.

The last time Stanford came away from a two-game Pac-10 weekend empty-handed was in 2004, at the hands of Arizona and Arizona State. Both opponents were unranked at the time.

There were a lot of similarities, then, with the recent episode in Los Angeles. But this particular Stanford team has its own unique vulnerabilities that were exploited by two up-and-comers this past weekend.

Stanford has three players averaging more than ten points per game: senior guard Candice Wiggins (18.2 ppg), sophomore center Jayne Appel (15.7 ppg) and freshman forward Kayla Pedersen (12.3 ppg). But to a greater extent than last season, the Cardinal is getting its offense from only one place: inside the three-point arc.

Stanford is shooting only .281 from three-point range this season, a disturbingly low number for any team, especially a top-ten program — in fact, the Cardinal is eighth in the Pac-10, ahead of only perennial losers Washington and Arizona. Wiggins has picked up her average (.310) a bit since a disastrous start, but no other starter has a higher three-point percentage than sophomore point guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude’s .289.

That shortcoming reared its head on Sunday, as Stanford went 3-for-20 in its one-point loss to USC. Bad shooting nights happen, but this was not just an aberration for the Cardinal. It had been an accident waiting to happen all season. It nearly derailed Stanford in its double-overtime victory over unranked Utah in November (4-for-24), and it certainly caused trouble last weekend.

The season’s other major problem brought the Cardinal down on Friday night despite slightly more respectable 6-for-28 three-point shooting. Turnovers have been tearing the team to pieces this year. Against UCLA, the total was 18 while the team only had nine assists. For the season, the Cardinal has a 1.17 assist/turnover ratio, the best of any Pac-10 team, yet still poorer than last year’s 1.21.

This is perhaps the Cardinal’s biggest problem. Stanford has a fine stable of point guards, but each of them has torn an ACL in the last year and a half, with sophomore Melanie Murphy out for the season with the most recent injury. The rust is showing in the Cardinal’s ball-handling.

Still, all is not lost for Stanford, who is still ranked No. 7 in the nation. Wiggins has pointed numerous times this season to what she perceives as much-improved intestinal fortitude compared to previous teams. It certainly showed in the close wins over Rutgers and Tennessee, whereas Stanford fell to the two highest ranked opponents it played last year, Tennessee and Georgia. Despite obvious and glaring deficiencies, the Cardinal is still winning.

Among the marks of a great team is how it reacts to adversity, and “great team” is a phrase that many were tossing around after the Tennessee win. The 2006-2007 Stanford Cardinal rebounded from back-to-back losses (against the Volunteers and Bulldogs) early last season by ripping off 17 straight wins. This weekend, and the next, will be critical in determining where this year’s team finishes at the season’s end.