Julius Barnes has been an up and down
player in his tenure at Stanford. Friday night was his highest
point to date on the Farm, as he led Stanford to another dumping
of the Golden Bears from Berkeley. This game wasn’t as easy
as the final score might indicate, but after 26 minutes of action
it was all Julius Barnes all the time. The game started out slow
with Stanford leading 12-11 after the first tem minutes of
action. The first half was a very sloppy and often painful thing
to watch, as the Pac-10 refs made themselves known with four
offensive foul calls in a row in one stretch. Stanford was able
to gain a 34-31 halftime lead after a very rough first half of
play. After getting two nine point leads, Cal cut the lead to
47-44 and then Stanford seized control. As a team, they hit five
three pointers in a row and never looked back. The lead ballooned
to 66-46, and the rout was on. The starters all returned to the
bench and the game was over by all intensive purposes.
As mentioned, Julius Barnes led Stanford
with 27 points and 5 assists. He had many highlight-reel plays
including a coast to coast three-point play and an improbable
spinning 360° lay-up. He also hit Matt Lottich often in
transition to extend the Stanford lead. Barnes also was playing
some extended minutes at the point guard spot, something that we
could be seeing in the near future. Borchardt had a rather slow
game but was again dominant on the defensive end. He changed many
Cal shots and blocked two of them to go with his eight rebounds.
Josh also came off the bench to have his best performance since
the Purdue game, with 13 points. Besides Barnes, the story of the
night was the great game by Matt Lottich. He came off the bench
and had 12 points in ten minutes. He was all over the place and
his three-point shot looked very good.
With all the positives coming out of this
game, there were some negatives. The first and foremost is what
is going on with Casey Jacobsen? True, no one here can expect him
to score 30 points a night but it seems like he really in a
slump. He is getting hounded on the offensive end and it seems to
be getting to him. He only scored seven points and really has to
work hard for everything. This is nothing to get worried about,
but it isn’t fun seeing the 1st team All-American
struggle on the floor.
Overall the game was a really good sign.
This team is capable of far more than they showed in Las Vegas
and is really starting to hit its stride at the perfect time. The
defense even tightened up Friday night as Cal only shot 34%.
Stanford also outrebounded Cal 40-30 and prevented them from
having second chance shots. After it seemed like this team was
going downhill, it has rejuvenated itself coming off two very
impressive victories.
Once again, another tough game in Berkeley
as the Cardinal travel to a hostile Haas Pavilion Sunday. Hope to
see you all there!