On Saturday, Stanford men’s basketball defeated Washington at home by a final score of 90-80. Stanford fifth year forward Spencer Jones led the way for the Cardinal with a career-high 30 points and four rebounds while freshman guard Kanaan Carlyle had 16 points and five assists. Washington forward Keion Brooks, Jr. was the top performer for the Huskies with 20 points and 11 rebounds. Stanford improves to 10-8 overall and 5-3 in the Pac-12 while Washington falls to 11-8 overall and 3-5 in the Pac-12.
VIDEO: Stanford MBB Postgame Press Conference | Washington
BOX SCORE: Washington at Stanford-Saturday, January 20th
“Well, it’s a nice bounce back win for us,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “We’ve done that some this year is come off a struggle, a loss, short turnaround, and for this to get the result we got today is certainly a positive. Washington is an extremely talented team, a veteran team, guys that have been playing college basketball at a high level for a long time. So, excited and really excited about the opportunity now to continue to try and get better.”
The big news for Stanford was that Spencer Jones was back after missing the previous game due to a wrist injury. His presence on the court was felt from the opening tip. He did a great job of setting the tone, which was an issue in their loss to Washington State on Thursday.
“It’s certainly a big reason, I think you knew that answer before you asked that question,” Haase quipped when asked about Jones’ return. “One of the really awesome parts is it’s as good as he was offensively and as important as that was, the defensive end of things, he has great length, he can really slide his feet, he can guard certainly one through four on the other team, and he had such such value on the defensive end as well.”
Stanford got out to a 15-9 lead with 14:44 to go in the first half. Spencer Jones already had a triple for the Cardinal while Michael Jones was up to five points. Wilhelm Breidenbach was doing his thing for the Huskies with four points after knocking down a pair of foul shots.
With 13:27 to go in the half, it was a 20-9 lead for the Cardinal after Spencer Jones was up to eight points while Carlyle had three points and a block. Carlyle was doing work on both ends of the floor.
Stanford continued to keep their foot on the gas, leading 22-13 with 11:34 to go in the half. Stanford was shooting 9-17 from the field and 4-8 from 3-point range. As for Washington, they were shooting 3-9 from the field and 1-3 from 3-point range. Their 6-6 shooting at the foul line was keeping them in it.
With 7:48 to go in the half, Stanford led 24-17 as Washington was starting to come back. Stanford had a 3:30 scoring drought and five turnovers in the last 4:52. They were getting sloppy and letting Washington back in the game.
With 2:14 to go in the half, Stanford led 35-29. Michael Jones was up to eight points for Stanford after making a nice pull up three while Carlyle had six points after knocking down his second triple of the night. Stanford had a +3 rebounding advantage, doing a nice job on the glass.
At halftime, Stanford led 39-31. Michael Jones and Spencer Jones each had eight points for Stanford while Kanaan Carlyle and Andrej Stojakovic each had six points. The Cardinal had a balanced scoring attack. As for Washington, Breidenbach (8 points & 5 rebounds) and Keion Brooks, Jr. (7 points & 5 rebounds) were leading Washington. It was a strong half overall for the Cardinal despite a rough five minute stretch.
Stanford would lead 48-44 with 15:11 to go. Washington was starting to make a comeback as they were shooting 5-8 from the field so far in the second half. They had gotten off to a nice start. Stanford needed to defend better.
With 11:28 to go, Stanford led 59-51. Spencer Jones was starting to really catch fire with 20 points on 6-10 shooting from 3-point range. He was playing like he was trying to get two games worth of points.
Washington would then get within two points as it was a 64-62 lead for Stanford with 7:47 to go. Washington was shooting 12-18 from the field in the second half and 5-9 from 3-point range. Stanford was shooting 7-15 from the field and 4-7 from 3-point range. Stanford was doing a good job at the foul line shooting 7-8.
It continued to be a tight game as Stanford led 71-69 with 5:28 to go. Washington wouldn’t go away. Their 12-13 shooting at the foul line was making a real difference. Stanford had nine turnovers. They needed to take better care of the ball.
Thankfully for Stanford, Spencer Jones wasn’t done. He would hit a huge three to make it a 74-69 lead with 3:56 to go. He was up to 26 points and four rebounds on 8-12 shooting from 3-point range. He was carrying the day for the Cardinal.
“The number one thing is, the first day he got on campus, the speed and energy at which he practices and practices is shooting is off the charts,” Haase said of Jones. “Every practice rep he’s ever had and I assume in high school and middle school and everything else is game speed. And so there’s no transition or no change ever. It’s always practice a certain way. So his process has been phenomenal and he has a quick release and he has great size and he has a high release point as well. All those things lend it to be able to get the shots up, but I think his process of how he’s practiced is really the reason he has the ability to shoot like he does.”
With 2:04 to go, Stanford was now up 84-72. Spencer Jones was up to 30 points while Kanaan Carlyle (14 points), Brandon Angel (13 points), and Michael Jones (11 points) were in double figures as well. Carlyle was doing a great of getting to the foul line, shooting 6-7.
“Offensively we want to get to the paint and get to the free throw line, we did a good job of that with 27 attempts,” Haase said. “But anytime you’re designing a play or designing an offense, you want to have at least some kind of a threat at the paint, you know and Kanaan can get downhill and he’s going to continue to grow and learn how to make all the right decisions and all the right passes, but he does a lot of them really positive right now.”
In the end, Stanford would win by a final score 90-80. Washington made it a game. It’s just that Stanford and primarily Spencer Jones found an extra gear to get across the finish line. Every time Washington looked like they might take the lead, Stanford found a way to fend them off. Many times due to a timely 3-pointer by Spencer Jones.
“It wasn’t just hey, he made a bunch of threes or scored a bunch of points as the timing of it,” Haase said of Jones’ performance. “I think our offense was really efficient, but there’s an asterisk on those threes when the game gets close, it’s a one possession game or one point game and he knocks those in, those are big big deals.”
For Stanford, this is a huge win. 5-3 in league play feels a lot better than 4-4. To bounce back like they did showed a good deal of growth from the last couple of seasons. It feels like previous teams would have let the Thursday loss to Washington State snowball into a Saturday loss. Instead, they got back in the win column and have some momentum heading into an important road game at Cal on Friday.
“Rob Ehsan our assistant coach had talked about on the last two of our losses, things that we needed to really fix were turnovers in the first half and really locking down and defending when we’re on the other end in the second half,” Michael Jones said. “The first half, I think we only had six turnovers which even then we can still cut down on that, and I think that just really set us up for success. We were getting great looks throughout the entire game and gotta keep working on getting stops especially in the second half. But we were able to ride that momentum…It feels very good to win.”
“Yeah, and I’ll say it shows the growth of our team,” Spencer Jones added. “I mean last year we started off 0-7. Those losses compiled. This year you can sense that we can turn things around quick, we can make adjustments, we won’t let one loss turn into many. We have more resilience this year.”
As for Washington, this game didn’t go the way they wanted it to, but at least they picked up a win at Cal on Thursday. To walk out of the Bay Area road trip with a split isn’t bad. Both Stanford and Cal are tough outs on their home floors. They shouldn’t be feeling down about how the weekend went even though they of course would have wanted to win this game. Keion Brooks, Jr. came to play with his 20 points and 11 rebounds, showing why he’s one of the top players in the Pac-12.
“The guy’s a consistent 20 point scorer,” Spencer Jones said of Brooks. “He’s 6’8”-6’9”, athletic, he’s shooting the ball really well this year which makes it even harder. If you close out on him, he’s athletic enough to drive by you, can elevate over you. I mean, he’s hard to stop and very physical. So, it’s tough. A tough matchup.”
Going back to Spencer Jones, he really was amazing. It wasn’t just the 30 points he scored. It was the way he scored those points. When Stanford really needed a bucket, he stepped up and knocked his shots down. That’s what he came back for a fifth year to do.
“It was really just not playing Thursday really put a fire in me,” Jones said. “Just being a leader on this team and not being out there, hurts a little bit and then doctor came in clutch with some good news. Helped me get out there.”
Up next for Stanford is a road game at Cal on Friday, January 26th. That will tipoff at 7:00 PM PT on FS1.
“Yeah, they’re really an example of what college basketball is right now,” Haase said of the Golden Bears. “A bunch of transfers, old guys that are very very talented. They’ve lost some close games, but they’re really good. I’ve watched them some, so we understand it’s going to be a great challenge and it’s a rivalry game and there’s lots of different reasons and bottom line is we’re gonna need to put together a heck of an effort to have a chance.”
“Yeah, it’ll be a good week of practice,” Michael Jones added. “With playing our travel partner, it’s obviously only one game next week. So we’ll be able to hopefully get a couple good practices in, get some guys healthy, and really get incrementally better and be able to carry that into the game and then in terms of the game specifically, just go about it preparation-wise how we normally do. Take it seriously and obviously there’s, being a rivalry there’s maybe a little bit more off the court, but it won’t really affect our preparation. We’ll just take it one game at a time.”
Note: Stanford graduate point guard Jared Bynum was still out with a lower body injury. He remains day-to-day.
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