On Monday at 1:00 PM PT on ACCNX, Stanford men’s basketball will welcome the Denver Pioneers to The Farm to open up the regular season. This will be the first game of the Kyle Smith era, who is taking over for Jerod Haase, who was relieved of his head coaching duties after eight seasons.
The star player for Stanford this season is senior big man Maxime Raynaud, who is looking to take another step forward from a strong junior season. The Cardinal also bring in a number of transfers and look to be a very different team than they were a season ago. The Cardinal have not made the NCAA tournament since 2014 and while they are not expected to get back this season, the hope is they can at least build the foundations for a program that will get back to the dance in the near future.
On Denver: The Pioneers are coming off a season in which they went 17-17 overall and 6-10 in the Summit League. Their head coach is former Stanford associate head coach Jeff Wulbrun and their director of operations is former Stanford assistant Jack Frost, who was elevated to the position a season ago. So, it’s a bit of a homecoming for both of those guys.
The top returning player for the Pioneers is sophomore guard DeAndre Craig, who averaged 6.6 points per game. Their top three scorers from last season either graduated or transferred out, so it’s a whole new looking team. In that sense, it’s hard to know what exactly we’ll see from this team, but after today’s game we’ll have a better understanding of what kind of team they are.
Keys to the game: For Stanford, the first thing they need to do is feed the big man. Maxime Raynaud is their top player. If he gets going and has a big afternoon, I don’t see Denver putting up much of a fight. It’ll be fun to see what kind of performance Raynaud has.
Secondly, Stanford needs to practice what they preach and show more effort on defense. This is a game where you’d love to see some runs where Denver has a tough time scoring. Perimeter defense from Jaylen Blakes I’ll be looking for.
Lastly, Stanford needs to take care of the ball. That was an issues during the Haase years. I expect to see better ball security from the Cardinal. If that improves, they’ll be fine for this one.
Prediction: I got Stanford winning comfortably. It’s kinda hard to pick an exact score given Denver has so many new pieces, but I’ll say Stanford wins 70-52.
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