By Jenni Carlson
Staff Writer

NORMAN -- Oklahoma wants the Lloyd Noble Center, a West Regional site in the NCAA women's basketball tournament, to be a house of horrors for visiting teams.

For Stanford, it already is.

The Cardinal played the Sooners in Norman earlier this season. Stanford's players and coaches had a devil of a time actually getting there. An ice storm stranded six members of the traveling party in Dallas, forcing them to rent a van and drive. One player, stuck in Chicago, eventually flew to Tulsa and took a cab to Norman.

Then Stanford lost not only the game but also its starting point guard.

"It," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said, "wasn't a pleasant 24 hours."

Now the Cardinal, a No. 10 seed in the West Regional, must play seventh-seeded George Washington at 9 p.m. tonight at Lloyd Noble Center.

Seems like a cruel joke.

"I didn't think it was a joke," VanDerveer said. "Jokes are funny."

And nothing was funny to the Cardinal about what happened on that icy day in December.

Stanford's top reserve, Chelsea Trotter, went down late in the first half. As the trainer worked on her sprained ankle, the Cardinal experienced a second injury.

Susan King grabbed a loose ball in OU's backcourt. The freshman had taken over six weeks earlier for starter Jamie Carey, who suffers concussion syndrome and has been advised not to play basketball. King was just starting to get the hang of it, just starting to do what everyone knew she could.

She already had 13 points when she got the loose ball.

And when King drove down the floor, OU guard LaNeishea Caufeld pursued and caught her from behind. They collided, and King went down. Her teammates didn't know how bad it was, but they knew.

King's screams and tears told them.

She had torn her right knee, almost a complete tear of the anterior cruciate ligament.

"When someone gets hurt," VanDerveer said, "you're always upset. When they're hit by another player, you wonder if it was avoidable.

"She was done shooting her layup and got clobbered. I do think it was avoidable."

Stanford forward and Norman High grad Sarah Dimson said, "That game was sort of a turning point in our season."

Stanford inserted Nicole Powell in the point guard spot, eliminated a two-game deficit in the Pac-10 standings during the last week and won the conference title.

Despite the good for her team and for her now surgically repaired knee, King still struggles to talk about the injury. She refused interview requests Friday. But it's easy to see why as her teammates practiced without her, as she strengthened that knee just a few feet from where she injured it, as the NCAA tournament went on without her.

"I'd be lying if I said I walked past that spot on the floor, I didn't think about it," VanDerveer said. "It was something that did change the course of our team."

A course that has brought them back to the Lloyd Noble Center.

No joke.