On Saturday, Stanford men’s basketball suffered another bad home loss. This time on Senior Day against Colorado by a final score of 70-53. Forward Evan Battey led the way for Colorado with 15 points and 4 rebounds while guard Nique Clifford had 14 points and 7 rebounds. Stanford senior forward Jaiden Delaire was the lone Cardinal in double figures with 12 points. Colorado improves to 18-9 overall and 10-7 in the Pac-12 while Stanford falls to 15-12 overall and 8-9 in the Pac-12.
“Struggling for our seniors,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “In different ways and in some similar ways they’ve been extremely important to this program. I’ve been very very fortunate to have a chance to coach them. It was exciting to watch them play the first four minutes and really be effective in sharing the basketball and trying to do things that we’re trying to do. But, the game as a whole, certainly disappointed in the outcome. I don’t question our guys’ desire or work. It’s just a combination of things of running out of gas a little bit, some injuries that are nagging, and then inability to execute and a lot of that certainly goes to Colorado’s ability to execute their game plan. Probably have and needed a couple days off right now. We’ll get back to the videos and make a plan moving forward knowing that we need to get better.”
Stanford rolled with a starting lineup consisting of Jaiden Delaire, Sam Beskind, Lukas Kisunas, Daniel Begovich, and Spencer Jones for Senior Day. Jones being the only non-senior in the lineup. Keenan Fitzmorris has been injured all year, so Stanford had to have a non-senior in the lineup. The unique lineup did well as Stanford led 8-3 with 16:00 to go in the first half. Delaire was up to 4 points for Stanford while Beskind had a bucket and Begovich had a steal.
With 11:25 to go in the first half, Stanford led 15-12. It was now a game. The Buffaloes were on a 6-0 run over the last 1:16, shooting 5-8 from the field. As for the Cardinal, they were shooting 7-13.
The game would soon be tied as it was 18-18 with 7:45 to go in the half. It was kind of a sloppy game. 0 points for Colorado in the last 2:14. 0 points for Stanford in the last 3:20 and five turnovers in the last 5:15.
Stanford would lead 28-25 with 3:11 to go in the half. It was truly a committee scoring effort for Stanford as Delaire was leading them with 5 points. Stanford was shooting 2-7 from 3-point range. They needed to get more of those to drop.
With 1:18 to go in the half, it was a 28-27 lead for Stanford. Max Murrell got a clutch block inside for Stanford, preventing what would have been a go-ahead bucket for Colorado. Keeshawn Barthelemy would get fouled and make both shots of the one-and-one for Colorado while Delaire would respond for Stanford with a triple. Colorado would then attack the rim, but Beskind was there at the rim to keep it away. 31-29 Stanford led at halftime.
Stanford led 37-36 with 15:48 to go. Delaire was coming alive for Stanford with 12 points. Michael O’Connell was the number two scorer with 6 points. Others needed to get rolling.
Colorado would then take the lead to go up 47-46 with 11:32 to go. Clifford was up to 11 points for Colorado while Battey was up to 10 points. Jones was up to 6 points for Stanford following a 3-pointer and a technical foul shot.
Colorado would lead 51-46 with 8:55 to go. Colorado was starting to gain some separation. Stanford called for time, hoping to get a spark. The Cardinal made just one of their last eight field goal attempts and were currently on a 2:36 scoring drought.
“We had a great sense at halftime,” Haase said. “The guys were excited. I thought we had a good plan coming out. Our offense came to a screeching halt and our lack of production on the offensive end as we’ve seen in most teams when that happens, you lose a little bit of step on the defensive end and that happened.”
Colorado continued to lead 58-50 with 3:46 to go. Delaire threw up some junk at the backboard that didn’t even come close to going in. Also, Harrison Ingram was having an off night with just 2 points on 1-8 shooting from the field.
“There’s only certain things I can do, but the things I can do I will certainly try and put him in a position to be successful,” Haase said of Ingram. “We need to get the proper cuts, the proper spacing on the floor. At the end of the day, I have a great deal of confidence he’ll respond after this weekend and play great. But obviously he and I and the rest of the team, we need to do better.”
In the end, Colorado walked out with a 70-53 win. For Stanford, to call this loss disappointing is an understatement. It would be easy to call this a hangover game from the Utah loss, but Stanford actually came out pretty strong in this game to start. But in the second half, they slowly fizzled out and once Colorado started to pull away, that was all she wrote.
“At the end of the day it is, there’s always game planning and strategy, but it’s also one of those things do the shots go in or not,” Haase said. “And I give Colorado credit. They made their shots and made the plays when they had to. I wasn’t able to put our guys in positions to allow them to execute and put the ball in the basket. I do think we have some good shooters on the team, but these last couple games, we’re not shooting at a real productive rate and I think when those shots go in, everything seems to look a little bit better. And defense tends to get a spark and things tend to go better.
“But, yeah, we gotta try and execute and we have done it at times this year. But our margin for error right now is very very very small. It has been all year and we just don’t have the ability to overcome some of things we’re trying to overcome whether it’s everything from turnovers to our guys are pretty banged up right now to making sure we’re calling the right plays at the right times.”
At this point, Stanford just needs to make sure they don’t let this week’s two losses to Utah and Colorado be the beginning of an end-of-season collapse. One could argue they’ve already collapsed, but if they were to bounce back next week at Cal and close out the regular season with a split at the Arizona schools, they would be entering the Pac-12 tournament with at least a little bit of positive sunshine.
One thing that is good is that they’re going to get a full week off before that Cal game. Something Jerod Haase feels his team could really use.
“No question, I mean to be honest with you, we’re desperate for it,” Haase said of getting a week off. “We’ve had I think 15 games in I don’t know how many days. Once we came back from the winter break and their COVID and everything else, we jumped into it pretty quickly and pretty aggressively. And essentially playing 15 games in just over a month is challenging. Our guys are tired, they are banged up. It’s not an excuse, it’s a fact. And I think this time off will be beneficial and then we gotta put all the pieces back together again with our offense and our defense and then see if we can do it live action in a week.”
The game against Cal will tip-off on Saturday, February 26th at 5:30 PM PT on Pac-12 Networks and Cardinal Sports Network radio.
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