On Tuesday, Stanford men’s basketball fell to Santa Clara at home by a final score of 89-77. Santa Clara junior guard Adama-Alpha Bal led the way for the Broncos with 23 points and six rebounds while graduate student guard Carlos Marshall, Jr. had 20 points and four steals. Stanford junior center Maxime Raynaud had a career-high 26 points and 7 rebounds while freshman guard Andrej Stojakovic had 18 points, his highest point total of the season. Santa Clara improves to 3-0 overall while Stanford falls to 2-1.
BOX SCORE: Santa Clara at Stanford-Tuesday, November 14th
VIDEO: Stanford MBB Postgame Press Conference | Santa Clara
“Certainly a disappointing loss,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “I thought our guys competed, but there's a different level of physicality that we didn't have tonight. Certainly give Santa Clara a lot of credit. Their guys competed; they made shots when they needed to. They really did a nice job building their roster. They had a lot of turnover last year and really used the portal well to really put together a nice team. I think they will have a lot of success this year. They shot the heck out of it in the second half. I think there were some loose balls and rebounds that if we secure, not only do we have possession, but I think eliminates some of those threes but we're going to need to get back to the drawing board quickly and improve. It’s the bottom line.”
Before tipoff, Stanford announced that senior forward Brandon Angel was out with a hand injury and is day-to-day. With freshman point guard Kanaan Carlyle still out with a non-injury issue, the Cardinal were a bit undermanned.
Stanford got off to a strong start, leading 14-7 with 16:49 to go in the first half. Michael Jones was up to six points for the Cardinal while Maxime Raynaud had four points off a jump hook and a pair of free throws.
With 12:03 to go in the half, Stanford led 28-16. Stojakovic was up to 12 points on 5-6 shooting from the field and 2-2 shooting from deep. Michael Jones was also on fire with nine points on 3-3 shooting from deep. The Cardinal were looking strong.
Santa Clara would come clawing back as it would be a 36-35 lead for the Stanford with 3:58 to go in the half. Johnny O’Neill (12 points) and Carlos Marshall, Jr. (10 points) were in double figures for the Broncos. Stojakovic (12 points), Michael Jones (11 points), and Raynaud (10 points) were in double figures for the Cardinal.
At halftime, Stanford led 46-44. Raynaud was up to 17 points and three rebounds while Marshall and O’Neill each had 12 points for the Broncos. The Cardinal were in front, but the Broncos were right there.
“Yeah, Maxime is, he’s playing great,” Haase said of Raynaud. “He’s playing with a ton of confidence. He’s a load in there. Has the ability to score around the rim and our guys do a nice job of finding them. We have a great deal of confidence in him when he does catch the basketball around the rim, but he’s playing at a high level and we need to keep as much as we can, run the offense through him, especially in the low post and at the rim.
With 15:35 to go, Stanford led 55-53. Stojakovic was up to 18 points after the hoop plus the harm. Jared Bynum had a pretty three-point play as well. As for the Broncos, Marshall was cooking with 15 points.
Santa Clara then burst ahead, leading 62-57 with 11:10 to go. Stanford was shooting 4-16 from the field and 1-6 from 3-point range. The Cardinal needed to get rolling on offense. The defense needed to step up, too. Santa Clara was shooting 10-20 from 3-point range.
Stanford then came back a bit as it was a 62-60 lead for Santa Clara with 10:40 to go. Benny Gealer had a huge 3-pointer. He was up to six points on 2-4 shooting from 3-point range.
With 7:48 to go, it was tied 65-65. Raynaud was up to 19 points after a slam inside off an assist from Bynum. Santa Clara had a +1 rebounding advantage. Stanford needed to do a better job on the glass.
“We need to finish possessions first of all,” Haase said. “12 offensive rebounds was too many. We need to find a way to dive on the loose balls when they are there. And then we need to be able to keep the ball from just continually coming down the gut to the paint. I thought they had a nice game plan, they executed it well, I thought we had some breakdowns. They ended up putting us in rotations that I think we could have avoided. I think by our principles I think we probably should have avoided them, but that’s when I’ll go back and look at the tape, but they got the ball to the paint. When you get to paint touches, good things tend to happen and good things happened for them.”
Santa Clara then took the lead to go up 77-71 with 3:03 to go. Spencer Jones finally had his first field goal of the night for the Cardinal and had three points. Without Carlyle and Angel, the Cardinal needed to get more out of him, though it was clear that he wasn’t at a hundred percent due to a hand/wrist injury.
“I don’t think he’s had a hundred percent,” Haase said of Jones. “But he’s a warrior right now. He’s out there, he’s giving it everything he possibly can.”
In the end, Santa Clara won by a final score of 89-77. Stanford played Santa Clara tough in the first half but faded in the second half. Considering they were favored by almost 10 points; this is a bad loss for Stanford to suffer this early in the season. They should have won this one. Even with Angel and Carlyle out, they still had to figure out a way to win this one.
“I think their intent in what they were doing offensively in the first half/second half, I don’t think there were massive changes in what they were doing,” Haase said of Santa Clara outscoring them by 14 points in the second half. “They were obviously a lot more effective in the second half. Defensively, they were physical with us in the second half, they did a nice job jamming Maxime on the rolls and making sure that we had to get to secondary looks and secondary plays, which we did not do very effectively. So they did a nice job with that.
“At the end of the day, too: Players make plays. When they shoot 13 and 28, forty six percent from the three point line, you gotta give them a lot of credit of their players made a lot of great plays.”
Touching quickly on Santa Clara, they should feel good about this one. They went on the road and beat one of their rivals. While it’s not a widely talked about rivalry, I would consider Stanford and Santa Clara to be rivals and so it always feels good to beat a rival opponent on the road. Santa Clara looks like a team that could make some noise in the WCC this year.
“They were just a tougher team,” Michael Jones said of the Broncos. “Made some more shots, were able to execute better. Not much else to say. I mean, they executed really well. I mean, coming in to have a two-point lead, I thought they got on a good run to end the half, brought some momentum into the locker room, and obviously really carried that through the second half.”
As for Stanford, the only positive spin they can put on this one is they weren’t at full strength and then Santa Clara is actually a pretty good team. Had Angel been able to play and Spencer Jones not been banged up, they very well may have come out victorious. And then who knows? Maybe having Carlyle out there would have made a difference, too. The bottom line is we haven’t yet seen this Stanford team at full strength and so that’s reason to have some hope. The season is still early.
In the meantime, Stanford has to figure out how to win games until they get everybody back. Injuries and absences are part of the game and good teams figure out how to navigate such challenges. It’ll be interesting to see how they respond.
“Yeah I mean Brandon if you look back probably last 15 games of last season, the start of this season, I don't know that you'll find statistically a player that has done better than he has in from shooting percentage to rebounding to effectiveness,” Haase said of missing Angel. “And so with him out it provides a challenge, but it also provides an opportunity for others to step up and kind of take advantage of that opportunity and in some ways some guys did. It's hard when you have a senior out there that's that good. He's physical, he's a rebounder, and those traits we missed out there today. So it's challenging, but that's my job is to be able to overcome that and I didn't get that done.”
“He’s an emotional leader,” Raynaud said of Angel. “Also clearly like, scoring and rebounding leader as well. I think we missed him a lot. Especially on the rebounding end. But still, like, we cannot make excuses. Injuries happen, we wish him the fastest recovery possible, but we gotta deal without him. We gotta do it without him. He’s still here at practice. Like, doing everything he can to help us. Whether it is like scouting reporting, just giving us energy, just like, driving us to the right spot mentally, yeah, I mean, we clearly miss him, for the next two weeks potentially we’re gonna have to do without him, so we need to adapt.”
And on that note, Stanford’s next game will be on Friday at 6:00 PM PT on Pac-12 Bay Area. They’ll take on Eastern Washington out of the Big Sky conference.
“I am concerned about learning from this game first, watch the tape tonight, we’ll get the guys tomorrow,” Haase said. “That’ll be the first thing is learn from this and then we’ll need to develop a game plan. I do know that they [Eastern Washington] play a brand of basketball that’s a little bit unique and different. We’re gonna have to really do a great job of scouting and then the guys need to be able to focus on that game.”
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