NCAA Women's Tournament | Stanford's Candice Wiggins puts Pittsburgh players on guard

SPOKANE — Pittsburgh didn't need to see Candice Wiggins' stellar performance in the second round of the NCAA women's tournament to know they have to stop the Stanford star to have any chance of pulling off another upset.

Wiggins scored a career-high 44 points against Texas-El Paso in the second round in her final game at Maples Pavilion. Shutting her down is going to be key to Pitt's chances to upset the second-seeded Cardinal (32-3) tonight in the semifinals of the Spokane Regional.

"Candice Wiggins? She's awesome. She's tremendous," Panthers coach Agnus Berenato said Friday of the star guard who has 16 20-point games this season.

But if sixth-seeded Pitt (27-10) thinks double-teams and bumping from their smash-mouth defense alone will deter Stanford's All-American, or end the Cardinal's 20-game winning streak, it's going to be a long trip back to the Steel City on Sunday morning.

From rousing talks to teammates in huddles, to rearranging the fingers of the coach who dared to guard her in a practice, Wiggins has far more than just smooth moves and piles of points.

"Candice came on as a freshman and she, basically, the first day of practice, she practiced like the Olympians I had worked with," said Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer, who coached the U.S. women to the gold medal in the 1996 Olympics. "She's very intense. I made the mistake of trying to guard her in a drill and she jammed my finger.

"She is a real special human being."

Panthers senior point guard Mallorie Winn grew up with Wiggins in San Diego. She is two years older, and her father coached Wiggins on a select team aptly named "Future Stars" when Wiggins was 10 years old. So Winn knows.

"We understand that Candice is the focal point of their team," Winn said. "So we really do need to ... pay attention to her and make a great effort to limit what she can do."

Yet here's the thing with Stanford: If Pittsburgh blankets Wiggins with double-teams, 6-foot-4 center Jayne Appel will roam free inside or step outside to make three-pointers. Freshman forward Kayla Pedersen will be free to show why she is the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year.

Between Wiggins' two sterling halves against UTEP and Appel's huge half en route to 33 points in a blowout of Cleveland State in the first round, Stanford has had three 20-point scoring performances in a half during this tournament.

"It's not just about one player at this level," said Marcedes Walker, who will be guarding Appel.

Pitt's pounding, 6-3 center often rules the inside while averaging 13.9 points and 9.6 rebounds.

The Panthers see themselves as hardened for this multidimensional challenge.

"Pittsburgh is a blue-collar city. And I think our team is a blue-collar team," Berenato said.

Last year was Pitt's first NCAA tournament berth, which ended with a loss to top-seeded Tennessee in the second round. Just three years ago, the Panthers were 13-15. They were 6-20 the season before that.

But then the lively Berenato convinced Walker, a high-school star in Philadelphia, to cross the state. She convinced Winn that she could win in Pittsburgh. She dragged overlooked guard Shavonte Zellous, now the team's leading scorer at 18.1 points, out of Orlando, Fla., to the rust belt.

Now the rugged Panthers have emerged from a challenging nonconference schedule and the brutal grind of the Big East.

During the Big East season, the Panthers went 2-4 while playing five ranked teams.

"I thought I was crazy because we went through a really hellacious part of the schedule in February where we played five of the teams ranked in the top 16 in the nation," Berenato said. "We were really stressed."

But the stress produced poise. Pitt got to the Big East tournament semifinals — where Connecticut routed the Panthers for the second time in three weeks. Then Pitt upset Baylor, the national champion three years ago, to get to its first regional semifinals. It was the first time since 1981 the Panthers had beaten a higher-seeded team in the NCAA tournament.

Notes

• Idaho coach Mike Divilbiss resigned Friday after athletic director Rob Spear decided the Vandals needed to move in another direction. The Vandals were 4-25 this season and were 82-119 in Divilbiss' seven seasons as head coach.

A settlement was reached on the two years remaining on Divilbiss' contract, school spokeswoman Becky Paull said.

Alison Chase, an assistant for the past two seasons, will serve as interim head coach. Divilbiss' resignation came a week after the university hired Don Verlin to coach the men's basketball team after firing George Pfeifer.

• While Louisville's men prepare to play North Carolina in an NCAA regional final in Charlotte tonight, the women's teams from the same two schools will meet earlier in the day in New Orleans in the third round of the women's tournament.

"We just hope that our guys' and women's teams can make history by both beating North Carolina," Louisville forward Angel McCoughtry said.

• Maryland senior Crystal Langhorne, on her NCAA tournament experience: "We've been in Spokane for two days now. ... We practiced at Gonzaga and we went hard for about an hour and a half. It was a very good practice. Just to get up and down and back into the flow felt really good. We're looking forward to playing games again. The rest of the day we were free. We grabbed some food then went to the mall; it was only two blocks away. I love to shop, and unfortunately, it did not have one store that I wanted to go into."