On Sunday, Stanford men’s basketball had a dominating 87-69 home victory over Washington. Freshman forward Harrison Ingram (17 points & 10 rebounds), junior forward James Keefe (career-high 17 points & 5 rebounds), and senior forward
Jaiden Delaire (18 points & 8 rebounds) led the way for Stanford while graduate transfer guard Terrell Brown, Jr. led Washington and all scorers with 30 points, 7 rebounds, and 6 assists. Stanford improves to 14-8 overall and 7-5 in the Pac-12 while Washington falls to 12-9 overall and 7-4 in the Pac-12.

“Yeah, I thought our energy, enthusiasm, effort, kinda attitude coming into the game was really good,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “I thought our guys took yesterday’s practice and film sessions really well. I thought they had the edge and focus needed to come into this game. We started off well, obviously making some shots. But I really thought that stemmed from the mental approach to it. Washington’s really done a fantastic job in conference right now. They’re a good team. Daejon, certainly had hurt them when he went out. He’s so active in that zone and can do some different things. But for us, we look at this as really a heck of a win for us, we’re excited about it and we have another quick turnaround, which seems to be the norm.”

From the jump, Stanford was in control as they led 6-0 with 17:29 to go in the first half. James Keefe had four early points while junior forward Spencer Jones had a bucket inside. Washington called for time. Stanford would further extend their lead to go up 10-2 with 15:58 to go in the half. Ingram added a triple while Delaire knocked home a foul shot.

This game wouldn’t go well at all for Daejon Davis in his return to Maples as he got hit with a hard, legal screen from Stanford senior forward Lukas Kisunas. He appeared to injure his shoulder and walked gingerly to the locker room and would not return. At this point of the game, Stanford led 15-10 with 12:39 to go in the half. Washington was on an 8-0 run after getting down 15-2.

“I care a lot about that guy,” Keefe said of seeing Davis go down. “I hope he’s doing alright. I asked one the guys, he said he’s doing alright, he might have jacked up his shoulder…Obviously playing two years with him, he was a good teammate and a great player here.”

Washington would make it a 10-0 run to trail 15-12 before Kisunas ended the run with a bucket inside to make it a 17-12 lead for Stanford with 11:19 to go in the half. Ingram and Keefe each had 6 points for Stanford. Ingram was shooting 2-2 from 3-point range. Junior guard PJ Fuller was up to 6 points for Washington, also shooting 2-2 from deep.

Rather than letting Washington creep back more into the game, Stanford would extend their lead to go up 30-21 with 7:22 to go in the half. Delaire had a nice hoop plus the foul. He was up to 6 points. As for Ingram, he was up to 8 points, getting a lot more involved offensively. Brown, Jr. was leading Washington with 10 points, hitting some really tricky shots around the basket.

“I did talk to him before the game,” Haase said of Ingram’s strong start. “We met yesterday. I’m not taking credit for what he did because that’s him performing. But we did talk about just the preparation and how to go into the game as opposed to just getting out there and hoping things go well and I’m not saying he was doing that, but we did talk about the preparation of the scouting report of film, of his body, of all those different things. It’s not like he wasn’t doing things. But I emphasize that. I thought he did a great job and you could just see it in his eye coming into this game that he was focused and ready to go.”

Stanford would lead 38-28 with 4:00 to go in the half. Jaiden Delaire would be up to 8 points after sophomore point guard Michael O’Connell connected with him for an alley-oop. Things continued to go Stanford’s way as Delaire banked in a triple from the wing like a horse shot. He was up to 13 points. Stanford was now up 46-33 with 49.8 to go in the half.

At halftime, Stanford led 46-33. Delaire (13 points & 3 rebounds) and Ingram (8 points & 3 rebounds) were leading the way for Stanford while Brown, Jr. (12 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists) and Fuller (9 points) led the Huskies. Stanford looked like they had figured some things out from their first meeting with Washington, cruising to a comfortable double-digit lead.

“It is a nice tool to learn from,” Haase said of having seen Washington’s zone earlier in the year. “I thought my staff did a fantastic job with prep in our attack and how we wanted to attack it and the truth is we haven’t played against a ton of zone this year. And so, we had to learn from film, but that experience, that first game was something we could learn from. We could learn from the film and it also helps us for our game planning for this game. So again, any time you do something and have more experience with it, it’s going to be a good thing.”

“I would say I feel like we’ve kinda dominated three halves,” Keefe added. “Like if we played them four halves, we’ve dominated three halves against them. Obviously we were down like 20 at halftime up in Seattle and then almost cut it all the way back and lost. And then two great halves here. And so part of it is, obviously we got some young guys and like we hadn’t had a lot of experience playing against a zone, all of us. But also I think it was our mentality going in. We kinda started on our heels. They imposed their will on us, got a lot of easy buckets versus tonight. I mean I think you saw from the jump we were playing physical, tough, and involved.”

With 15:40 to go, Stanford led 51-40, still in a good spot. Delaire (13 points), Ingram (11 points), and Keefe (10 points) were all in double figures. Brown, Jr. (16 points) led Washington.

Stanford continued to put the pedal to the metal as they led 61-44 with 11:56 to go. Ingram was on track to have his best game of the season with 17 points and 9 rebounds. He was in the zone.

With 9:28 to go, Stanford led 65-50. They just needed to keep this up. Outside of Terrell Brown, Jr. (22 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists), no other Huskies player had established much of a rhythm.

Over the next minute and a half, Stanford would extend their lead to 17 points, up 69-52 with 7:59 to go. Stanford had a 36-26 edge on the boards and had skated by just fine with their 14 turnovers. Stanford was moving the ball well with 16 assists, doing a nice job of getting everyone involved.

Stanford’s lead just continued to grow as they led 82-59 with 3:36 to go. It was now officially a blowout. Keefe was doing work inside up to 17 points while Delaire was up to 18 points following a triple. Stanford was on track to have their largest margin of victory on the season. What made this even more wild is that Washington blew Cal to smithereens on Thursday, rocking their world 84-63. Considering that, many people, including myself, expected this game to be a dog fight.

In the end, Stanford walked out with an 87-69 victory. After losing in Seattle earlier this season, Stanford learned their lesson and took care of business against Washington with little trouble. They attacked the zone really well and ended up making Washington look soft inside, which is what happens when you attack a zone well.

“The game plan was we’re going to impose our will on them,” Keefe said. “And a lot of that involved blowing up ball screens, applying a lot of ball pressure to guys who are shooters, but maybe aren’t as comfortable dribbling the ball or putting it on the ground. They got a really good player in Terrell Brown as you guys all know, leading the Pac-12 in scoring. So, kinda worked our best to contain him and the other guys in the gaps helping out. I thought we had a great game plan from the coaches.”

“Exactly,” Ingram chimed in. “One of our biggest strengths is length. So we knew this thing in the gaps and packing it in, half-court defense to score is hard to score on for us.”

For Stanford, this win is huge. They really needed to win this game. Even if it was close. But what makes it even better is they won in a blowout. This is their first blowout victory of the season after being on the losing end of a few. One of the things factored into a team’s NET ranking is margin of victory and by winning this one by 18 points, that will help Stanford’s NET more than a close victory would. Stanford needs all the brownie points they can get to impress the NCAA tournament committee and a win like this one is certainly one they can point to as reason to give them a look.

“It’s great,” Haase said of being on the winning side of a blowout. “I’m hoping it shows progress. We’ll see how the rest of the year plays out. But, the cool thing is there’s so many things we can learn from as we were building a lead, we kept doing some silly things that we need to learn how to get over. But offensively, we continue to execute pretty well. Defensively in the second half, we struggled getting stops. The biggest thing on the second half is there were some mental errors that we need to reduce. But having said that, to be able to build a lead and maintain that lead is really a good step forward for us.”

“It feels amazing,” Ingram added. “Playing against their zone is pretty tough. We came with an amazing game plan from our coaches, just kinda spreading it out and being ready to shoot. And just losing up there to them when we were on a roll. We needed this game because we’re trying to play in March Madness.”

Another major storyline from this game is the continued development of James Keefe. With each game he seems to be getting more and more confident in his game. After starting the season a bit shaky, he’s really picked things up and earned a permanent spot in the starting lineup. He credits a lot of that to his teammates and advice from his dad, but ultimately he’s had to put in the work and it’s paying off.

“It’s been a lot of work for sure and a lot of faith from my teammates and coaches in believing in me,” Keefe said. “I mean, nights like tonight. I definitely got some buckets, but a lot of them are easy ones. Like JD, I don’t know if it’ll show up in the stat book, but he tapped me an offensive rebound right to me under the hoop. It was just an easy dunk. And so plays like that. I think when we’re playing as a team, we got a couple great feeds from Mike, stuff like that. When we’re playing as a team, it’s fun. It’s fun. Scoring’s fun, but winning is really what it’s all about.

“He [my dad] is the best. I look up to him in so many ways. Like, what is a man? Obviously he’s my father. But I mean as a basketball player, I think he’s extremely cerebral, extremely smart, and that’s part of what made him so good. And so, I mean, he was my first coach. So I talk to him on the phone usually once or twice a week and he texts me from time to time. It’s mostly positive stuff, but I mean, he’s so smart. He’s played the game for so many years with so many good players and coaches that he’s able to give me some great input that I think other guys don’t get. So, it’s definitely an advantage.”

Up next for Stanford is a home game on Tuesday against UCLA, who is currently ranked #3 in the AP Poll, but expected to drop in the rankings following back-to-back losses at Arizona and Arizona State. That game will tip-off at 8:00 PM PT on ESPN2 and Cardinal Sports Network radio.

To connect with CardinalSportsReport.com on Twitter, click here.

To connect with Ben Parker, click here.