On Thursday, Stanford men’s basketball fell to Utah on the road by final score of 90-68. Utah guard Cole Bajema led the way for the Runnin’ Utes with 21 points and four rebounds while center Lawson Lovering (17 points & 5 rebounds), guard Gabe Madsen (15 points & 4rebounds), and guard Deivon Smith (13 points, 10 rebounds, & 10 assists) also had strong performances. As for Stanford, guard Michael Jones (20 points) and guard/forward Andrej Stojakovic (13 points) were the top scorers. Utah improves to 17-11 overall and 8-9 in the Pac-12 while Stanford falls to 12-16 overall and 7-11 in the Pac-12.
BOX SCORE: Stanford at Utah-Thursday, February 29th
“Well, I can pretty easily along with anybody that watched the game talk about all the issues and problems,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “The reality is I need to find solutions. But the rebounding deficiency was obvious. I thought we had made some progress with that throughout the conference season, but the last couple games it’s gone south on us.
“We’re not getting as many easy baskets for a variety of reasons, but our transition game isn’t quite what it had been and again it’s some of that’s by choice. But when you’re just trying to grind offensively, it’s a little bit harder to get the clean looks and the break down threes that we were getting earlier in the year.
“Defensively right now, we tried a lot of different defenses, a lot of different zones, different deals with man defense and as we all know, wasn’t very effective. So it’s my job. My job. My job. My job. My job to try and find solutions to this and then be able to get the guys to execute what I want to do and have done.”
Utah got off to a strong start, leading 15-5 with 13:37 to go in the first half. Utah was shooting 46% from the field while Stanford was shooting 22%. Stanford needed to get rolling.
Utah would lead 22-14 with 10:48 to go in the half. Stanford was starting to show some signs of life. Maxime Raynaud (6 points) and Andrej Stojakovic (5 points) were leading the Cardinal. Bajema’s five points was leading Utah. The Utes were getting more scoring balance.
Utah then turned on the jets a bit to lead 29-16 with 7:53 to go in the half. Bajema was up to 11 points for the Utes, who were on a 7-0 run over the last 1:54. Stanford’s defense was looking sloppy as they weren’t rotating well.
Utah led 36-18 with 4:00 to go in the half. Stanford was shooting 8-24 from the field and 1-9 from 3-point range. The wheels appeared to be really coming off for the Cardinal.
At halftime, Utah led 46-27. Bajema’s 11 points was leading the Utes while Stojakovic’s nine points was leading the Cardinal as he had one third of their points. The Cardinal were getting crushed and needed to find a way to at least make this look respectable.
“Andrej as we know is very very gifted,” Haase said of Stojakovic. “We want him to be aggressive and then just kinda know the spots to be able to do that and then continue to improve his decision-making and for all of us, we have to improve the defensive end.”
Utah led 57-38 with 15:52 to go. The second half was tied 11-11. Michael Jones was trying to get things going for the Cardinal with 13 points on 5-11 shooting from the field. He was playing well. Stanford needed to find a way to get stops and go on a bit of a run to at least trim this to single digits.
Utah led 67-51 with 10:37 to go. Stanford was outscoring Utah 24-21 in the second half. The Cardinal were playing much better and Michael Jones (20 points) was a major reason why. Unfortunately for them, they laid a massive egg in the first half.
“Mike Jones was a warrior,” Haase said. “He’s not feeling great. We’re asking him to do a lot of different things. It’s really impressive. He knows every play from every different position which is kinda unheard of. But he’s very very smart. We put him in a lot of different situations and he’s become a real leader on the team.”
Utah continued to maintain their 16 point lead 69-53 with 7:54 to go. Bajema was up to 16 points for the Utes. Stanford was treading water, unable to put a further dent in Utah’s lead. That poor first half really haunted them.
“I thought the guys had a little more spirit,” Haase said of his team’s improved second half. “Early in the game it was just a bad start and just had a bad, things didn’t really go our way, but I suppose there was a bit more fight in the second half. Which is a good thing in terms of when you’re kinda beat down, do the guys have pride in going out there and I thought they did in that second half like you mentioned. But at the end of the day, we were trying every different look, every different play; at the end of the day we have to execute it better and I need to coach it better.”
After a triple from Bajema, Utah led 75-57 with 5:36 to go. Bajema was now up to 19 points. He was having a nice night for the Utes.
From there, Utah would win 90-68. Like the goose that Ebenezer Scrooge ordered for Bob Cratchit’s family on Christmas, Stanford was cooked. They had a terrible first half and just never were able to make it interesting in the second half. For Stanford, what made this game even tougher was the fact that Spencer Jones was out with a wrist injury. He’s so important to what they do. To not have him out there made it challenging for them on both ends of the floor. On top of that, the disgruntled and disenchanted Jared Bynum did not travel with the team. The Cardinal are going through a really rough patch right now and it couldn’t come at a worse time with the Pac-12 tourney and senior night against Cal right around the corner.
If there’s one thing Stanford could use right now, it’s a more efficient Kanaan Carlyle. He actually was ok against Utah with 10 points on 5-9 shooting from the field, but he hasn’t been putting up the same numbers he was earlier in the season. If he can find a way to work through that, maybe that could get their wheels turning again.
“There’s a variety of things,” Haase said of what’s slowing Carlyle down. “Truthfully, I remember vividly my freshman year and it’s a grind when you get to the end of it with the burden playing a lot of minutes on a team that’s struggling a little bit, it’s really hard especially as a freshman to being able to keep continuing to go. His attitude has been great. I do think as the officials have seen him more and more, I think he’s needing to adjust his game a little bit to that and certainly the other teams based on tape are playing him well and we need to make the adjustments for him to be able to be more productive and effective.”
One positive for Stanford was getting Max Murrell back in the lineup. That’s another guy who if he is able to find his groove could give them a bit of a boost down the stretch due to his length and ability to stretch the floor.
“Yeah, it’s great, it adds some depth,” Haase said of getting Murrell back. “It’s gonna be hard for him to get his, all his conditioning back and get in a rhythm of the game. But, he did some nice things out there. We believe deeply in him and he can really shoot the basketball, provides a lot of energy and also provides depth, so that’s a good thing for us.”
At this point, all that Stanford can do is just put this loss behind them and try to find a way to pull off a miraculous performance at Colorado. That game will be on Sunday with a 6:00 PM PT tipoff on FS1.
“Yeah, we need to go to Colorado and regroup,” Haase stated. “Look, nobody’s gonna feel sorry for us. We don’t need to lick our wounds. We need to find a way to get better and it starts competing, having a joy for the game, a love for the game, and an end goal of going down to Las Vegas and playing a magical four days, but the reality is we have to do better and I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again emphatically: It’s my job to get this right.”
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