On New Year’s Day, Stanford men’s basketball fell to Clemson on the road by a final score of 85-71. Clemson guard Chase Hunter led the way for the Tigers with 22 points while forward Chauncey Wiggins (17 points & 5 rebounds) and guard Jaeden Zackery (16 points, 5 rebounds, & 6 assists) also scored in double figures. Stanford guard Oziyah Sellers was the leading scorer for the Cardinal with 20 points and four rebounds while center Maxime Raynaud had a double-double with 14 points, 13 rebounds, and two blocks. Clemson improves to 11-3 overall and 3-0 in the ACC while Stanford falls to 9-4 overall and 1-1 in the ACC.
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Clemson-Wednesday, January 1st
Stanford got off to a good start in this game, leading 13-10 with 15:31 to go in the first half. Oziyah Sellers was up to five points for Stanford, who as a team was shooting 5-8 from the field.
Stanford would lead 20-17 with 11:39 to go in the half. Sellers was up to seven points for the Cardinal on a perfect 3-3 shooting from the field while guard Jaylen Blakes had six points of his own. The Cardinal were hanging tough.
Stanford led 31-27 with 7:25 to go in the half. Stanford was shooting 11-20 from the field while Clemson was shooting 10-20. Sellers and Blakes each seven points for Stanford while Chase Hunter and Jaeden Zackery each had eight points for Clemson.
Clemson would then take the lead 36-33 with 4:15 to go in the half. Hunter was up to 11 points for the Tigers while Sellers had nine points for the Cardinal. This one continued to be a battle.
At halftime, Clemson led 43-41. Hunter’s 11 points led the way or the Tigers while Sellers’ 11 points was leading the Cardinal. Maxime Raynaud almost had a double-double for the Cardinal at the break with eight points and nine rebounds.
Clemson got off to a nice start in the second half, leading 49-45 with 16:46 to go. The Tigers were on a 6-0 run as the Cardinal called for time. Raynaud now had 12 points and 10 rebounds for Stanford. He was starting to get going a bit.
With 15:54 to go, Clemson was up 49-47 after a bucket inside by Blakes, who had 11 points for the Cardinal. Both teams were battling hard. Clemson’s 13-15 shooting from the foul line was making a difference. Stanford was shooting good at the line (7-8), but they weren’t getting to the line as often as they would have liked.
Clemson would soon go on a 10-0 run to lead 62-52 with 11:46 to go. Stanford called for time as Clemson was starting to wear them down with their physicality. Stanford needed to find a way to answer.
With 7:48 to go, Clemson was up 73-59. Zackery (16 points) and Hunter (15 points) were leading the way for the Tigers. The Cardinal continued to fade. Sellers was up to 14 points as the top scorer for the Cardinal. He needed more help.
From then on, Stanford wouldn’t get much closer. They were able to briefly get it back into single digits with 4:53 to go as Clemson led 78-69. Switching to a zone helped Stanford for a bit, but Clemson ended up cracking the code in the end. Clemson 85 Stanford 71 would be the final score as a strong second half by the Tigers put the Cardinal away.
For Stanford, while this wasn’t the way they wanted this game to go, they can feel good about playing Clemson tough for the first 25 minutes of the game. Clemson is a borderline top-25 team and so to play them tough on the road speaks well of Stanford. There’s a lot of positives they can take from this game. I think the biggest takeaway they should have from this is they need to be more physical and then they also need to learn how to finish games better. They kinda faded in this one and that’s not going to cut it on the road.
Up next for Stanford is a road game at Pittsburgh on Saturday, January 4th. Tipoff is set for 3:30 PM PT on ESPN2.
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Blue Sky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Blue Sky: @slamdunk406
Email: slamdunk406@yahoo.com
Join the conversation on CardinalSportsReport.com
