Stanford needs a catchy name for its upcoming 11-day stretch of four consecutive games against teams ranked in the preseason top 25. 

Murderer’s Row fits, but comparing DePaul, Duke, Tennessee and Connecticut to Ruth, Gehrig, Lazzeri and Meusel doesn’t seem fair to the baseball gods.   The Death March could be appropriate, but it might not be deadly for the No. 2-ranked Cardinal, which could win the first three at home heading into the the Dec. 23 game against No. 1 UConn. 

Tennessee coach Pat Summitt and Connecticut coach Geno Auriemma -- Associated Press photo by Wade Payne

We have settled on The Meat Grinder, because the next four games could crush Stanford’s resolve or it could shape the Cardinal into a powerful unit, making it interesting to see what it spits out at the end.

This is a better Cardinal team, but it will open its Meat Grinder segment coming off a two-week layoff for exams.   Seldom do teams play their best after such a long layoff, so Sunday’s game against DePaul is a bit of crap shoot.   It is also the easiest of the four games in the sequence with each foe getting progressively more difficult.

The DePaul team Stanford will face Sunday at Maples Pavilion will not be as good as the one the Blue Demons had to begin the season.   Ranked No. 15 two weeks ago, the Blue Demons lost their best player, Deirdre Naughton, for the season when she tore her anterior cruciate ligament in a Nov. 24 game against Northwestern.   Naughton was averaging 17.5 points before she injured her knee midway through the first half of that game.   That contributed to the Blue Demons’ four-point loss to Northwestern and a subsequent 11-point loss to Wisconsin-Green Bay.

DePaul is no longer ranked, but beat Loyola-Chicago by 43 points on Sunday.

Two days later, the Cardinal will host No. 7 Duke, which is 7-1 and beat then-No. 3 Ohio State by 16 points last Thursday.   The Blue Devils’ Jasmine Thomas is the kind of guard who has been problematic for Stanford over the years, and the Cardinal hopes she doesn’t run circles around Stanford’s backcourt.   However, Duke will be coming off a nine-day layoff when it faces Stanford, so the Blue Devils may show a little rust.

No. 4 Tennesse, which comes to Maples Pavilion on Dec. 19, four days after the Duke game, owns a nine-point win over Baylor, which currently ranked No. 6, and a 20-point win over No. 17 Texas, the latter occurring on Sunday.  The Vols’ inside duo of 6-6 Kelley Cain and 6-3 Glory Johnson will give Jayne Appel and Nneka Ogwumike a workout, and Tennessee’s 6-3 small forward Shekinna Stricklen is a do-everything player much like Stanford’s 6-4 small forward Kayla Pedersen.  

The grand finale of the 11-day stretch is a nationally televised game against No. 1 Conecticut on Dec. 23 in Hartford, Conn.  The Huskies have won their games by an average margin of 46 points, including a 25-point win over Texas at Texas.    UConn’s Tina Charles is a good bet to be the first player selected in next spring’s WNBA draft, and she isn’t even the best player on the team.   Maya Moore was national player of the year last season, and might repeat.   Moore’s perimeter threat from the forward position was something Stanford was ill-equipped to handle last seson.

After UConn the Cardinal will have a week off to recover before playing Fresno State in its final nonconference game before opening Pac-10 play against Cal.   By then, Stanford will be honed to fine point or burnt to a crisp.