By Matthew T.F. Harrington

photo credit: gostanford.com Stanford’s Marcus Sheffield drives the ball as the Cardinal are denied by Arizona on Thursday night

The Stanford Cardinal appeared poised to take the 12^th-ranked Arizona Wildcats to the limit Thursday night at Maples Pavilion, but a one-point halftime deficit turned into a 71-57 loss for the Cardinal.

Arizona guard Gabe York scored a game-high 19 points while teammate Ryan Anderson pitched in 18 at starting forward. Stanford’s stellar freshman guard Marcus Sheffield continued his meteoric rise to become one of the Cardinal’s most potent scoring threats, netting 17 points for his third double-digit scoring output over his last 6 games.

The Cardinal (10-7, 3-3 Pac-12) struggled from the field, shooting 30 percent from the field while only hitting 4 of a total 21 threes attempted. Arizona (16-3, 4-2) went 8 for 18 from downtown while hitting nearly half (48 percent) of their shots from the floor.  Stanford only turned the ball over 9 times and managed 7 steals but a 42-29 rebounding margin in favor of Arizona spoiled the host team’s night.

The Cardinal trailed by as much as 8 points at 12-4 five minutes into the first half, but outscored the Cats 26-19 to head to the locker room at the half down 31-30. Stanford took its only lead of the game 5:43 into the 2^nd when Grant Verhoeven hit a free throw to make it 40-39 for the home side. Arizona would go on to score the next 12 points unanswered to build an insurmountable 51-40 lead with 8 minutes left. They would outscore Stanford 20-17 over the final minutes of regulation.

Stanford gets an opportunity to avenge its loss when they host Arizona State Saturday night at Maples Pavilion. The Sun Devils are currently 1-5 in Pac-12 play. Arizona State fell to Cal 75-70 Thursday night.