Stanford was flying high out of the locker room Tuesday night,
still on an emotional high from their victory Saturday night in
the Pit. All signs were favorable with a home matchup against
Southern Utah, a team that made the tournament last year but lost
four starters over the offseason. Then the ball was tipped and
all of the moment came to a crashing halt. Southern Utah played
an aggressive style of defense and made this game interesting,
never letting Stanford pull away and hitting on some very tough
shots. When it was all said and done Stanford walked out with an
81-63 victory but the game was much closer than the score.
The game started very slow with it being 6-5 Stanford after
five minutes of play. The game then went back and forth for the
next ten minutes with neither team grasping the game, or getting
a lead of five points. Stanford seemed very confused with
Southern Utah’s 1-1-3 zone defense, which was evident by
Casey’s struggles in the first 15 minutes and by the number
of turnovers and near turnovers they had. But for the last five
minutes of the half Stanford made a run and pushed the lead to 12
points on a Joe Kirchofer tip shot to end the half. In the second
half the lead was cut to 10 points with 8:58 to play but was
never closer. The team seemed to play lethargic at times and
threw a lot of passes away. This was partly due to the
officiating which made many bad calls for each side and never
letting this game to have any sort of flow. Stanford did push the
lead to 18 with free throws in the final minute and walked out
with a victory of the same margin.
This game also had its great moments. Justin Davis had two
alley-oop dunks and Curtis Borchardt had two dunks of his own.
Josh Childress continued to impress, with 13 points of his own
and many fine plays on the defensive end. He gives Stanford what
they have desperately needed for years, which is an athletic wing
player who can defend. Casey was his usual self after his early
game slump and finished with 23 points to lead Stanford. Dan
Beus, who I warned, people about in my preview played his best
game of his career. He scored 23 points for the game and gave
Stanford fits on defense. He had a great jump shot and hit a
couple threes to go with his many jumpers. He also attacked the
glass and picked up many rebounds to give his team some more
chances.
Curtis had his second double-double in as many games and is
proving he is going to be a force this season. He is long and
wiry and seems to get his hands on the ball off the rim the
strong majority of the time. He is drawing the defense in the
post, which has given Childress room to roam and perform in the
open court. Davis had his highlight reel plays but was on the
bench a lot again due to his foul trouble. He picks up a lot of
touchy fouls for simply being overaggressive at times, something
that I am sure he will fix throughout the year. He also continues
to run the floor well, which gives Tony many options on the
transition. Speaking of Tony his second game was not great but he
did provide some good transition baskets off great feeds. He
seems to becoming into own a little bit more in every game and is
making some nice passes. Hernandez also got some playing time at
the point but seemed overwhelmed a little bit in his home debut.
Overall I didn’t come out of this game to excited. I felt
the team played a solid game but is capable of playing much
better. I guess this is just on of the things one has to get used
to with this team is that it will have its off nights and will
produce many more turnovers than we have been used to. The win
pushes Stanford’s record to 2-0 and sets up a huge matchup
in Indianapolis against Purdue where all 19,000 fans should be
behind the Boilermakers. Last year in this tournament Purdue
knocked off then number 1 Arizona. But then again so did New
Mexico!