Wiggins can put capper on career by getting Stanford to Final Four with win over Maryland

3/30/2008 7:50 PM

By TIM BOOTH
AP Sports Writer

SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) - The Candice Wiggins bio is filled with almost every accolade available to a college basketball star - player-of-the-year this and all-everything that.

There's only one glaring omission: a trip to the Final Four.

``That would be the ultimate thing,'' Wiggins said Sunday.

For all her accomplishments at Stanford, where Wiggins will be recalled as the greatest to play for the Cardinal, getting Stanford to the Final Four is the one goal she has missed.

Her final chance comes Monday night when the second-seeded Cardinal put their 21-game winning streak on the line against No. 1-seed Maryland in the Spokane Regional final, a matchup of two teams that feel slighted.

The Cardinal (33-3) believe they should have been the No. 1 seed out West. Maryland (33-3) sees itself as the unappreciated, undervalued No. 1 seed everyone expects to falter.

Either way, tone of them heads to Tampa and a matchup with either Connecticut or Rutgers in the national semifinals.

``This is a game that everybody has been waiting for since selection Monday,'' Maryland guard Kristi Toliver said. ``You saw the split screen, and you saw us happy ... Now it's the showdown. It's the game everyone wants to see.''

It's been 11 years since a team from West of the Rockies has reached the Final Four. That Stanford team in 1997 was the last of three straight Final Four teams led by Kate Starbird that all failed to reach the national championship game.

The last West Coast team to win the national title was the Cardinal in 1992.

Stanford was in this position three times in the past four years, including twice with Wiggins as its star. Two years ago, when she was a sophomore, the Cardinal lost to LSU in the regional finals. A year earlier, it was a setback to Michigan State.

``I do feel this team is very different and I feel really different today,'' Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. ``We really have been preparing for being in this position all season long.''

In previous trips, Stanford lacked a supporting cast for Wiggins.

There wasn't the forceful inside presence of Jayne Appel, who is averaging 25 points in the tournament and will be responsible for trying to slow ACC player of the year Crystal Langhorne on Monday night. The point guard situation is far more settled with Rosalyn Gold-Onwude and JJ Hones - both sophomores who suffered knee injuries last season - combining to direct the Cardinal attack, taking the responsibility of getting teammates in the right positions off Wiggins, letting her become more of a scoring threat.

That doesn't mean the guards won't show their own scoring prowess, as Gold-Onwude displayed in Stanford's win over Pittsburgh. With the Panthers pushing and shoving Wiggins around, Gold-Onwude tripled her season scoring average with 15 points, including five straight in the second half that sparked Stanford's decisive run.

Wiggins had 14 in the win over Pitt, but got a sprained left hand courtesy of a hard foul in the final minutes from Pitt's Taneisha Harrison.

The only full-time starter left from 2006 when the Cardinal lost 62-59 to LSU in the regional finals, Wiggins doesn't think her teammates' inexperience is a hindrance.

``They're young and they haven't had that experience, but sometimes it's better when you don't' know,'' she said. ``You just play basketball.''

Maryland would prefer that everyone keeps talking about a potential Final Four trip being the perfect ending to Wiggins' career and the Cardinal being slighted by not getting a No. 1 seed.

All that keeps the Terrapins feeling anonymous, even with four starters still around from their national championship in 2006. They prefer being mostly ignored, even if Maryland finally looked worthy of its top-seed in a dominating 80-66 win over Vanderbilt in the regional semifinals.

The Terrapins kept saying that once they advanced out of the second round and got away from their home court in College Park, a massive burden would be lifted. It was only a year ago that Maryland was the defending national champs that were stunned in a second-round upset by Mississippi.

They backed up those statements by swarming Vandy on the defensive end, quickening the pace and using their offensive depth to overwhelm the Commodores.

After a pair of lackluster performances in the opening two rounds, the Terrapins looked championship worthy here, even if they feel others don't see it that way.

``Our team always loves being an underdog,'' Langhorne said. ``A lot of people still don't think we deserve (a No. 1 seed) and we want to prove a lot of people wrong.''