The ASU women’s basketball team had the No. 2 team in the nation on the ropes at its home in the first half of Thursday night’s matchup with Stanford.

The Sun Devils led by as many as 14 during the game. They outrebounded the Cardinal 22-14 and committed just five turnovers.

As a result, Stanford trailed at the break for the first time this season.

But unfortunately for the Sun Devils, a basketball game is 40 minutes, not 20.

Stanford outscored ASU 46-19 in the second frame to blow by the Sun Devils 71-48 at Maples Pavilion in Palo Alto, Calif.

“You tell me we’re going to be up four at Stanford at halftime this year, I’m like, ‘OK, I’ll take that,’” ASU coach Charli Turner Thorne said during her postgame radio interview. “Things that we should be doing, that I feel like are lessons that we’ve been taught and that I’m emphasizing with some of our players, they didn’t do. But this is a very tough environment, and [Stanford] is a very tough team, and sometimes things do get away from you.”

The loss snaps ASU’s four-game winning streak, while the Cardinal has now won 39 straight home games.

After the Sun Devils held a 29-25 advantage at halftime, Stanford quickly made up the difference and took a 32-30 lead on a layup by junior forward Kayla Pedersen a little more than three minutes into the period.

The Cardinal did not look back.

Stanford’s lead quickly ballooned to 16 points on a layup by senior forward Nnemkadi Ogwumike at the 11:45 mark, then 20 on a free throw by Ogwumike with around seven minutes to play. The lead then stretched to 27 points (63-36) on a 3-pointer by senior guard Rosalyn Gold-Onwude with 4:38 remaining.

“We let our offense affect our defense,” Turner Thorne said. “A tougher, more veteran team is just going to be out there going, ‘we’ve got to get stops.’ I was trying to explain that to them, but they really let things get to them. I thought we didn’t stay as poised in the second half when our shots didn’t fall.”

ASU did not connect from the field for the first eight minutes of the half and did not grab a rebound until the 7:47 mark. Overall, the Sun Devils only made five of their 22 shots after intermission and were outrebounded 26-9.

“The second half, the thing that was just so disappointing was our defense and our rebounding,” Turner Thorne said. “The whole [strategy] was [to] hold them to 56 and defend them. They didn’t do anything that we didn’t practice preparing for.”

But the first 20 minutes belonged to the Sun Devils.

ASU took an early 10-8 lead on a layup by sophomore wing Kimberly Brandon, which sparked a 19-5 run by the Sun Devils to extend their advantage to 27-13 with just more than six minutes left before the break.

“We played a really good first half and executed our game plan really well,” Turner Thorne said. “We didn’t play perfectly [and] we didn’t shoot it great, but we were solid and we kept it our tempo.”

Stanford immediately responded with its own 10-0 run to close the gap to 27-23 at the 1:39 mark of the first half, but ASU still took a 29-25 advantage into the locker room.

Senior guard Tenaya Watson was the only Sun Devil in double figures, scoring 12 points, all of which came in the first half.

Pedersen led all scorers with 23 for the Cardinal and also grabbed seven rebounds, Gold-Onwude scored a career-high 19 points and senior center Jayne Appel notched a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds.

Reach the reporter at gina.mizell@asu.edu