The No. 2 Stanford women’s water polo team puts its 11-game winning streak on the line this weekend when it heads to San Diego for the MPSF conference tournament.

However, despite the team’s great form as of late, it is still facing a very difficult challenge. In fact, if the Cardinal makes it to the championship game, it is likely that all three of its opponents will be ranked in the top six nationally, and if the tournament goes according to seed, they will be playing a UCLA team that still has yet to lose a match this season.

“There are 12 strong teams in our conference, including the top eight ranked teams in the country,” Stanford head coach John Tanner said. “Every game is of the highest caliber and exciting.”

The good news for the Card is that because the team finished second in the conference, it has a bye into the second round. The bad news is that the women will be facing a dangerous California team, which advanced to the second round after beating Long Beach State yesterday. Although the Bears are the No. 7 seed in the tournament, Cal is ranked No. 6 nationally and has proven to be more than capable of upsetting the Card.

Stanford has played the Golden Bears twice this year; the Card came out victorious in both contests. That is where the similarities between the matches end.

In the Stanford Invitational in February, the Cardinal handily beat the Bears by the score of 11-6. However, when the two teams faced off in Big Splash earlier this month, they produced a memorable nail-biter as Stanford came away with a hard-fought 6-5 victory after a back-and-forth game.

“They have plenty of goal-scoring talent and play strong team defense, so they present serious challenges to anyone playing them,” Tanner said.

If the Card can make it a hat trick of victories against Cal this year, it will meet either third-seeded Southern California or sixth-seeded Arizona State in the Pac-10 semifinals. Stanford has beaten the Sun Devils fairly handily twice this season, but their three matches with USC have been decided by a combined three goals.

Stanford and USC played twice in February in tournament play, with the Women of Troy pulling out a 5-4 victory in the first match and the Cardinal winning the second in overtime by the score of 7-6. The teams met in conference play earlier this month in Los Angeles, with Stanford once again emerging victorious in overtime, this time by the score of 8-7 and on the strength of four goals from Kelly Eaton.

However, the Trojans are no shoo-ins for the semis. USC and Arizona State split their two meetings this year, and the Sun Devils have been on fire in the past month and a half. After losing to UC-Irvine in quadruple overtime back on Mar. 8, ASU has gone 10-1, with its only loss coming at UCLA. With that kind of form, the Sun Devils could be a tournament dark horse.

If Stanford can make it all the way to the title game, odds are that it will end up facing top-seeded UCLA. Fourth-seeded San Diego State and fifth-seeded Hawaii are also candidates, but UCLA dispatched of both those teams fairly easily earlier this season.

In fact, the Bruins have dominated almost every team they have played this year — only USC and Stanford have taken UCLA down to the wire. The Card has played the Bruins twice this year, with both games ending in heartbreak for Stanford.

The Cardinal lost to the Bruins in sudden-death overtime in the championship game of the Irvine tournament in February by the score of 8-7, and then lost 9-7 in Los Angeles two weeks later. Stanford has certainly given UCLA all it could handle this year, and there is no doubt that the Cardinal could be the first team to blemish the Bruins’ perfect record. However, coach Tanner would rather focus on his own team than on any possible opponents.

“We [just] want to play at a high level throughout [the tournament] and be at our best on critical possessions,” Tanner said.