The first thing I want to do is give a world of credit to USC.
They played truly phenomenal basketball today - the best I've
seen in the Pac-10 this year. They played tight smart defense
while shooting lights-out on offense. The best comparison I can
make, for those who couldn't see the game... or those who are
suffering mental trauma that doesn't permit any recall of the
game, is to Maryland in Anaheim last year. Sam Clancy from
mid-range and David Bluthenthal from long-range looked like they
were throwing pebbles into the ocean. Unreal. Clancy in
particular showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is the
Pac-10's player of the year this year. His turnaround baseline
jumper looked automatic, and I thought many of them were tightly
defended. Bibby's boys shot 55% for the game, but more
importantly hit for 67% in their torrid first half when they put
the Cardinal away - including 64% from three-point range. You
can't do much but take your hat off to that out-of-this-world
shooting.
Now... that all being said, when you face thirty-point
deficits in a game, and fall by twenty-five at the end, you flat
out aren't competing. And Stanford has no business being that
noncompetitive with any team in the country, period. USC gets a
lot of credit for playing at their high level, and putting the
pressure on Stanford that helped deflate the Card's play. But
Stanford has to do a lot wrong to take a good SC effort and turn
it into this magnitude of a blowout. That means we need to dig
deep and find out just what went so sour in this game.
Though Stanford did make a mini-run early in the second half,
closing the gap down to 12 or 13 points for a bit, the game
really looked like it was won in the first half. Things have to
go horribly awry to trail by 20 before you hit the last media
timeout in the first half of a game. The "where" isn't
too tough to pinpoint.
The good guys registered just one field goal between the 12:00
mark and the 5:19 mark. The one field goal during that stretch
came when Chris Hernandez attacked SC's defense coming out of the
trapping pressure, heading straight to the hoop for a lay-in. The
score that ended that 6-plus minute stretch of just Chris' field
goal wasn't even a made basket - it was a goaltending call by
Jerry Dupree. But during that stretch, the game was essentially
given away. The score went from 16-20 to 19-37. A four-point game
slipped away to an eighteen-point disaster. Just a couple minutes
later, the margin had grown to 23.
All told, this game got away when USC went on a 34-11 run over
an eleven minute period. Stanford shot 5 of 20 during that
stretch and hit 1 of 3 FTs. No 3-point field goals fell during
that stretch.
Though Stanford lost in ugly fashion for the third time in
three games to USC this season, I wouldn't say that the root
causes were the same. The first game at the Sports Arena was an
ambush, where Stanford looked ill-prepared and certainly
ill-suited to execute the press-breakers necessary against the
full-court pressure Bibby installed late in the first half. The
result was a season-high of 27 turnovers, many of which led
directly and instantly to USC scores. That proved to be fatal in
the 8-point loss. The second game also brought pressure, but
Stanford executed the breakers and took Bibby out of the
full-court press. The half-court and three-quarters trapping
pressure still took Stanford out of sorts, though, and took them
out of their offense. At least, it cut the shot clock down to
effectively a 25 or 20-second clock. Stanford didn't set up its
offense, and resorted to chucking up threes. They made just 26%,
one of the lowest performances of the season, and lost. The
turnovers weren't so eggregious - heck, Stanford turned the ball
over more times in each of last week's wins at Tucson and Tempe.
I'd give Stanford's defense and intensity much of the blame in
that game. That and a failure to attack and punish the press when
it was broken. Stanford tried it early in the game, but had a
series of turnovers and offensive fouls that shook their
confidence. It never really happened again.
So you might look at the pressure USC applied in this game and
think that was again something Stanford couldn't do or failed to
do against the press. Stanford can always cut down on turnovers,
and certainly could have converted press breaks for a higher
percentage, but I think this game was lost in the first half with
deeper seated problems. Consider that in the first half, where
Stanford trailed by as many as 23 points, the Card had just 7
turnovers officially. Furthermore, USC also had 7 turnovers in
that half. Actually, I went and tracked every play from the first
half off the tape, and found 8 Stanford turnvoers vs 6 USC
turnovers. But contrary to what you might think, USC only
coverted 3 of Stanford's 8 turnovers into transition points.
Stanford converted 3 of USC's 6 turnovers into transition points.
Surprise: Stanford actually did a moderately better job of making
the opponent pay for turnovers.
The next myth you might come away with from this game is that
Stanford once again couldn't handle the trapping and the
pressure, causing these harmful turnovers. In fact, only 2 of
Stanford's 8 first half turnovers came from USC pressure. One
came early in the half on a sideline trap, while the other came
on a steal during a Stanford in-bounds play. The other 6
turnovers: bad inlet passes, stepping out of bounds, losing the
handle and fumbling the ball out of bounds. Those were unforced
turnovers, and the kind you have to blame yourselves for. They
were freebies handed to USC independent of any pressure.
One area where Stanford appeared strong was in the rebounding
column, grabbing 20 more rebounds over the course of the game and
6 more during the first half. I charted 8 Stanford offensive
rebounds in that decisive first half, versus 4 for USC. Given how
the two teams shot the ball, that actually isn't so impressive.
USC only missed 11 field goals in the entire first half, and thus
converted 36% of them to offensive rebounds. Stanford missed 21
field goals in the first half and thus converted 38% of them for
second chances. With that normalization, Stanford didn't really
achieve in that respect. But even worse, it was the relative
failure of Stanford to do something with those second chances
that was excrutiating. According to my charting, USC converted an
amazing 3 of their 4 offensive boards for points - and two of
those makes were three-pointers! That adds up to 8 points on 4
offensive rebounds. Wow. In contrast, Stanford made just one
measly two-point field goal in the entire first half off 8
offensive boards. That reflects upon a few core failings:
interior affectiveness, overall aggressiveness & hustle, and
shooting.
The disparate hustle underscored by this last statistic
carried through much of the game. This sadly repeats the failures
of the first half of the UCLA game at Maples, but once again
Stanford played too passively and with no intensity on defense.
USC was able to score 52 points during 16:26 of that half, but
Stanford only committed 4 fouls. Only two of those fouls came
during the first 14:50 of the game. Worse, just two of the four
fouls actually involved defensive contesting of a shot or drive -
the other two were ancillary contact that reset the shot clock.
This underscores how little Stanford did to make SC earn their
shots. There was no physical presence on defense, which very
likely helped to contribute to SC's offensive efficacy. When
nobody is going to put a body on you, check you as you go by, or
come at you hard when you set for a shot... you have all the
confidence that you get in a shootaround. Just you and the ball
and the basket. Essentially, there's no part of your defender in
that equation. For this situation to arise - again, no less -
with this team and this program, is incomprehensible. Tough
physical defense is a hallmark of Stanford basketball.
I thus think Stanford deserves some of the credit for SC's
unwordly shooting in the first half. The difference between this
game and the similiar problem in the UCLA game at Maples is that
USC is flat-out a better team. But to be more specific as to how
tough or easy SC's shots were, here are some more details. Out of
the Trojans' 22 first half field goals, I tracked just 4 that
were tough shots - either tightly contested or given by the
defense because they were low percentage. All 4 were impressive.
4 more came in transition, and I can't ask much when you are on
your heels with a 2-on-1, etc. But mistakes plagued the other 14
field goals. 5 came when Stanford didn't handle USC screens - 2
of them high screens and 3 of them inside screens. Although one
of them was an inside screen set by Errick Craven where he stood
in the key for 7 seconds... Another one involved two bad
switching mistakes, where Joe Kirchofer first came out on a man
without a screen necessary for a switch, and then Casey came out
to switch when Joe didn't need it - leaving Clancy unguarded
under the hoops for his easiest bucket of the day. Another bucket
came on an alley-oop when Stanford went zone for one possession,
and left Dupree (I believe) all alone on the baseline. Add one FG
when Julius charged out to lunge for a steal that wasn't there,
leaving Craven an open lane to the basket. Then another time Josh
lost Dupree on an in-bounds play, letting him receive the pass
under the basket for the lay-in with just 1 second on the shot
clock. The rest were just open shots given to USC when Stanford
defenders didn't play defense.
And the only two times Stanford made hard contact to foul and
contest a shot, the shots weren't seriously altered and still
went in.
Okay, okay. So the defensive horse has been sufficiently well
beaten here. On the offensive end, the failings were just as
responsible for this ugly loss. This is another place, though,
where you may not realize how this game was precisely lost. Given
the general malaise, if not outright nausea, you took away from
the 40 minutes of botchery, you might think that Stanford again
didn't really make USC pay for its pressure. That isn't true, as
I will support from the tracking I did of the decisive first
half. I tracked 33 field goal attempts from the Card in the half,
and without question the failings came in the halfcourt offense,
not on the run. Stanford did do at least a fair job of attacking
USC, as measured by the 7 of 10 shooting when directly attacking
the press or breaking traps. USC garnered just 3 field goals off
Stanford turnovers, but only one of those made field goals
actually came from their own pressure. Measure that one field
goal against Stanford's seven they scored breaking SC's pressure,
and I'm OK with the job those guys did Thursday. Furthermore,
Stanford ran in transition off USC misses or turnovers 3 times,
converting them twice for field goals. You might like to see
more, but there frankly weren't many SC misses to work with.
Those offensive conversions sound downright dandy. The problem
was that Stanford was asolutely putrid in shooting from the
halfcourt offense. They were predominately good shots to take,
but Stanford only hit 4 out of 20 shots out of the halfcourt
offense. The first came on a gimmee for Curtis off an offensive
rebound, though it was the only offensive board converted for a
bucket the entire half. The next halfcourt score never actually
got to the basket, as goaltending was called on a J-Chill
attempt. The final two were the strongest two, and both came late
in the half off the hands of Joe Kirchofer. When you see Casey
and Julius fail to make a FG attempt from a halfcourt set in the
entire first half, it's big trouble. Just to pile on a little, I
tracked 7 of these 16 misses that came right at or under the
basket, but were botched. True chippies that are just inexcusable
misses. Tough to overcome a 20ish point deficit when you
essentially take 14 points off your score like that.
I see three ways to react to this piss-poor offensive
efficiency in the first half. One is to say that you took good
shots, but it just wasn't your day for them to go down. A
17-point deficit at halftime could easily be ascribed to 1 of 8
three-point shooting, versus the 7 of 11 for USC. Keep shooting,
and they'll go down. Shake it off and don't even think about this
game. A second approach says that Stanford can't afford to be a
team that relies on making open shots, especially from the
perimeter. The shooting for this team has dropped off
dramatically from what Booties enjoyed watching the past two
years, and the stats bear it out. Stanford has had miserable
perimeter shooting performances in many of its losses: USC
(Staples), UCLA (home), USC (home), Arizona (home), kal (away),
BYU (Vegas) and Texas (Chicago). That's 7 of 9 losses where you
could say that a down shooting night was the death knell for a
team that isn't all that good on average. The defense and
rebounding have to be really outstanding to overcome shooting
slumps on this team, and that's asking too much. The third
approach says that there are some patterns underneath some of
these poor shooting performances - certainly against USC. When
the ball pressure and overall tempo take these guys out of their
game, they are succeptible to off nights. Just as USC gained
worlds of confidence by Stanford's passive defense on Thursday,
you can argue that Stanford is out of sorts and can't get into
rhythm. That translates not only into poor shooting outside, but
also missing the unmissable shots that should go for near-unitary
percentages inside.
I don't know this game well enough to give answers to this
problem, but I do think you have to start looking hard at #s 2
and 3 above. I don't know that I believe #1 with this team,
although you do have to tell your shooters to take really good
shots when they can. I'll throw two thoughts out: 1) When you
don't run into teams who can effectively pull off the pressure
and tempo like a USC, you simply want to draw up an offense that
gets even higher percentage shots. What was defined as a
"good shot" last year or two years ago... well, it's
not quite as good this year. Jacking up threes when you first
touch the ball in the halfcourt, with 27 or so seconds left on
the shot clock, is probably a bad idea this year. Set screens to
get open looks where the shooter can get set. Work the inside
where we know people can't stop Curtis. And when they go into a
zone or collapse on him, kick it outside or have someone charge
the basket to receive an open lay-up. 2) When someone like USC
can effectively affect this team's tempo and rhythm, the coaching
staff has to bear a great burden to keep guys on track. Coach K
at Duke may be disliked by many Cardinalmaniacs, but he's a
master motivator and has shown year after year how to push the
right buttons at the right time for each of his guys. When
Stanford does get the ball down low and misses even the easiest
of shots, you as a coach have to take control of your guys.
Otherwise, Bibby is the one pulling the strings and not Monty.
I don't think there's much of a silver lining to pull from
this loss. This team has proven it can bounce back in glorious
fashion, in response to the worst defeat. Last week's win at
Arizona came on the heels of two horrific home losses. But that
doesn't mean there is any certainty for this rebound. It is
heartening to see Josh Childress shake off some of his shooting
slump, going 5 for 11 for 12 points - his first double-digit
output since the UCLA game at Pauley back in January. It is also
positive to see Tony Giovacchini hit for 10 points on solid
shooting. Joe Kirchofer chipped in 6 points in just 8 minutes of
play. But the core failings in this game can't be overcome by a
few positive surprises. The final score is solid testament to
that.
One final note: the severity of these three losses to USC this
year is unmistakable. Their combined margin of defeat can only be
matched by the entire 11 losses in the regular season of the
prior three years. The magnitude of this losing
margin is also one of the worst in recent memory. In fact, the
last time Stanford lost this badly, the Card took a 32-point
whoopin' at McKale. It is interesting, though, that the loss of
which I speak came almost exactly four years ago. It was February
28, 1998 when that woodshed job was dished out. Somehow, Stanford
rebounded for its most magnificent postseason run in modern
history. Just food for thought...
Click here for the complete box score