[WBB fan]

Lots of worthwhile commentary, back and forth debate re what if, why, ref good or bad, etc. above. I agree with some, disagree with others, but find it all enlightening. Re refs, I found myself questioning many of the calls, but my questions were biased in favor of the Card -- natch. And some of those turnovers? What were people thinking? But some turnovers were in fact earned by the aggressive and good play of MD. That Stanford won says a lot about this team. MD is a very good team, one that The Athletic said should have been the #2 seed of the 16 teams in the Sweet Sixteen, right behind Stanford as #1. If you believe that, this should have been the championship game, not a Sweet Sixteen semi-final. I'm not sure they are THAT good, but they are certainly better than they were seeded, and the Card deserves a lot of credit for this win.

One thing that I don't recall pointed out in the comments so far is that the reason we were able to overcome all those turnovers -- a brobdingnagian rebound margin -- 50 for Stanford, 32 for MD. All those rebounds meant that Haley had a double-double, but two others (Lexie and Cam) were very close to that, and Fran had 7 rebounds in 19 minutes and Kiki 5 in ten minutes. And then there was the better shooting than MD (46% for Stanford, 34% for MD). Bottom line -- Stanford won this game. Yes, let's not have a repeat of the 4th quarter, but it was preceded by 3 quarters of really great play.

[WBB fan]

Lots of worthwhile commentary, back and forth debate re what if, why, ref good or bad, etc. above. I agree with some, disagree with others, but find it all enlightening. Re refs, I found myself questioning many of the calls, but my questions were biased in favor of the Card -- natch. And some of those turnovers? What were people thinking? But some turnovers were in fact earned by the aggressive and good play of MD. That Stanford won says a lot about this team. MD is a very good team, one that The Athletic said should have been the #2 seed of the 16 teams in the Sweet Sixteen, right behind Stanford as #1. If you believe that, this should have been the championship game, not a Sweet Sixteen semi-final. I'm not sure they are THAT good, but they are certainly better than they were seeded, and the Card deserves a lot of credit for this win.

One thing that I don't recall pointed out in the comments so far is that the reason we were able to overcome all those turnovers -- a brobdingnagian rebound margin -- 50 for Stanford, 32 for MD. All those rebounds meant that Haley had a double-double, but two others (Lexie and Cam) were very close to that, and Fran had 7 rebounds in 19 minutes and Kiki 5 in ten minutes. And then there was the better shooting than MD (46% for Stanford, 34% for MD). Bottom line -- Stanford won this game. Yes, let's not have a repeat of the 4th quarter, but it was preceded by 3 quarters of really great play.