Stanford is in prime position for Pac-12 women’s tournament

For Stanford, the Pacific Life Pac-12 Conference women’s basketball tournament is once again a dress rehearsal for the big dance later this month.

The tournament atmosphere, with its neutral site — Galen Center for the first two rounds beginning Wednesday, Staples Center for the final two — and its lose-and-you’re-done format, will help prepare the No. 2-ranked Cardinal for the NCAA tournament, which begins March 17 and for which it will probably be one of four No. 1-seeded teams.

Stanford Coach Tara VanDerveer, whose 28-1 Cardinal has won 25 straight games after a loss at No. 4 Connecticut, said the Pac-12 tournament can be a difficult but healthy test.

“The benefit for our team is everybody knows us real well, even better than the NCAA teams we’ll play,” said VanDerveer, who was voted this season’s Pac-12 coach of the year.

The rest of the league will be trying to stop top-seeded Stanford from winning the tournament for a sixth consecutive year.

“It helps Stanford if somebody really challenges them. It pushes them to new levels, gets them ready for NCAA tournament play,” UCLA Coach Cori Close said. The fifth-seeded Bruins face 12th-seeded Arizona on Wednesday at the Galen Center.

By posting an 18-0 league record, Stanford won its 21st regular-season conference title and its 12th in a row. The Cardinal feature a star duo of senior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike, who averaged 21.6 points and 10.5 rebounds and was voted the Pac-12 player of the year, and her sister Chiney, a sophomore forward who was the league’s defensive player of the year.

“Stanford is clearly in almost every category, when you look at it, superior,” Oregon Coach Paul Westhead said.

The Cardinal has a first-round bye and will play the winner of eighth-seeded Washington versus ninth-seeded Oregon on Thursday. If Stanford reaches Saturday’s final at Staples Center, it could face second-seeded California, its Bay Area rival.

But although Stanford is a heavy favorite to win, others such as Oregon State and USC are looking for a win or two to sweeten their NCAA tournament resumes.

“It seems like the magic number is 20,” said USC Coach Michael Cooper, whose team has 18 wins and is considered “on the bubble” for an NCAA at-large bid.

USC has been on that bubble in each of the last two seasons, and it missed the NCAA tournament in both of them.

The third-seeded Trojans have a first-round bye and will face the winner of sixth-seeded Oregon State versus 11th-seeded Washington State on Thursday at the Galen Center.

baxter.holmes@latimes.com

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