by Matt Harrington

PALO ALTO–When UConn (9-6) comes to town fans, media, faculty, front office, and scouts of every kind come running and Maples Pavilion will be no different on Saturday night as the Huskies are one of the marquee schools in NCAA basketball. It’s a school that is a powerhouse in terms of producing powerhouse players. Anytime you have UConn and Stanford (12-4) on the marquee it gets people excited just like UConn’s women’s head coach Geno Auriemma when they play against Stanford.

It’s rivalry in women’s basketball which can now carry over on the men’s side, it’s going to be interesting, UConn gets by on the cache’ of their name. This season where fans and media respond by saying “here is this great team, a former international champion within the last five years, this powerhouse of a squad” the Huskies have scuffled a little bit this year they just lost to Tulsa (11-5) in their first year in the American Conference.

So for UConn it’s been a bump down in the conference, a bump down in quality, and in terms of the quality of players that they put on the court it’s another bump down. UConn still are not the sisters of the poor, they’re not a intimidating team this year, their not the UConn of my older brother’s generation. Their on the downside they rode that ride to prominence, their a middling team right now so it will be interesting to see how they come out.

This is a sort of a reverse of trends for UConn, the Cardinal have to be looking at this game thinking “this is a chance for us to build our resume for the NCAA Tournament. This is also a chance for UConn to get a signature win for their NCAA Tournament resume. The Cardinal had some success with the Cal Bears on Wednesday night and anytime you can beat a rival on the opposition’s court it’s always a night to celebrate.

Stanford was definitely pleased to come away with a victory over the Bears and with a ten point victory because every single Pac 12 win they’ve been getting had been in some close games by one or two points or in overtime. So for Stanford it was nice for them to have a little bit of breathing room towards the end of the game last Wednesday night. As opposed to the game against UCLA and they have gone wire to wire in a lot of these games.

It was a big week for Stanford getting the win over Cal and getting beat in a razor close game against USC (9-8), the Trojans are a younger squad, they are a little less experienced, the Cardinal were coming off a very embarrassing loss when they went into Berkeley on Wednesday. So for USC to come in and battle Stanford the Cardinal really thought they were going for the win but they lost it by just two points last Sunday.

Matt Harrington covers Stanford basketball and is filling in for Michelle Richardson this week for the NCAA Commentary on http://www.sportsradioservice.com