The image is nearly impossible to forget.

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Jason Chuang

Sophomore Jayne Appel has been outstanding in the tournament thus far. Appel will look to help guide Stanford to the National Championsihp tonight against Tennessee, a team which Stanford has already beat this year.

Stanford’s locker room on one side of the screen; Maryland’s clubhouse on the other. The No. 1 seed in the Spokane Regional is announced: the Terrapins are awarded the No. 1 seed over the Cardinal. Maryland’s players rejoice; Stanford’s barely move.

Cardinal supporters — if not the team itself — rolled their eyes and shook their heads. To them, it was yet another example of east coast bias.

The claim that writers and NCAA committee members favor east coast teams over those of the west is fairly easy to explain: west coast games start (very) late on the east coast, to the point that many would rather sleep than spend two hours watching a game. And even if they wanted to stay up late, the Pac-10’s TV deal with Fox Sports Net means that only certain cable subscribers would be able to watch the game. This has led to considerably more hype for teams like Connecticut, Tennessee and Maryland than for squads like Stanford and California.

It’s not just the TV situation, though, which has led to this bias. The east simply has more women’s basketball powerhouses than the west. Stanford is the only west coast team to make the Final Four in the past 20 years, and even they had an 11-year drought before returning this year. East coast (and even midwest) teams have thus dominated the national debate, and rightly so.

However, the infatuation with the Connecticuts and Tennessees of the basketball world has led many to overlook the talent of this year’s Stanford team, one that was victorious over opponents such as the then-No. 1 Lady Vols and No. 3 Rutgers. They also beat Cal (a top-10 team for most of the season) three times, including a 56-35 thumping in the Pac-10 Tournament Championship game.

With its impressive resume in hand, Stanford felt confident that it would receive a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament. As the bracket placements came in, it became clear that the final one seed would be given to either Stanford or Maryland, a team that didn’t even make it to the finals of their conference tournament.

When the announcement came in, the Cardinal’s shock was clear: the team was both dumbfounded and angry. This quickly translated into added motivation for the tournament.

“I think that them giving us a No. 2 seed was the best thing they could have done for us,” said freshman forward Kayla Pedersen on Sunday. “That just motivated us and gave us that extra push to show the east coast what we’re all about.”

“I think that from the very beginning everyone saw our faces plastered all over ESPN at the seeding show when we got the No. 2 seed,” said sophomore center Jayne Appel. “I think it almost drives us more to prove not only to ourselves but to everyone else that we can play with the east coast teams.”

Indeed, Stanford’s already-torrent pace only picked up during the tournament, as it has dispatched opponents handily, capping off the current run with a solid win on Sunday over Connecticut, a media darling considered by many to be the most elite program in the country and the best this year.

“I think it was important for us to show through our play instead of through words,” said senior guard Candice Wiggins.

If Stanford can topple the giant that is Tennessee tonight, then the Card’s NCAA tournament victory can be seen not only as a momentous win for the school, but as a victory for the Pac-10 — and the rest of the west coast teams — as well.

It will shift the national discussion — for the time being. In order to keep the focus there, Stanford and Cal, as well as other western programs, will have to continue to find success.

But Appel isn’t worried.

“We have a lot of talent out there,” she said. “And I think there will be a lot more in the years to come.”