On Thursday night, Stanford men’s basketball suffered an 85-57 home loss to #3 Arizona. Junior center Oumar Ballo had a career-high 21 points and 6 rebounds for Arizona while sophomore guards Bennedict Mathurin and Pelle Larsson each had 13 points. Junior forward Spencer Jones and freshman center Maxime Raynaud were the top scorers for Stanford with 9 points each. Arizona improves to 15-1 overall and 5-0 in the Pac-12 while Stanford falls to 10-6 overall and 3-3 in the Pac-12.

“Obviously we were beat by an excellent, excellent team tonight,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “Early in the game and throughout the game, we were unable to answer the things they threw at us. Defensively they pressured us, forced us into a bunch of turnovers. But even more importantly we had no rhythm offensively. Weren’t getting the shots that we want to get and on the defensive end we struggled also. We had made some adjustments in preparation for the game and we were not able to execute the way I wanted to. I credit Arizona with a lot of that. They play with great pace on the offensive end. But something we’re going to have to do is learn from it quickly, put it behind us quickly, and try and prepare for Arizona State.”

Arizona got off to a nice start in this game, leading 12-5 with 14:59 to go in the first half. Bennedict Mathurin was up to 8 points for Arizona on 3-3 shooting from the field and 2-2 shooting from 3-point range. Spencer Jones had a triple for Stanford while Michael O’Connell had knocked down a mid-range jumper. Stanford had 5 turnovers while Arizona had 4. Most of which were charge calls.

Arizona would continue to dominate, leading 18-5 with 11:39 to go in the half. Mathurin now had 10 points for the Wildcats as he still hadn’t missed a shot. Stanford was up to 7 turnovers, really struggling to establish an offensive flow.

With 6:52 to go in the half, Arizona led 30-20 as Stanford started to look like they might be coming to life. Stanford got to as close as 6 points and for the first time all night had at least a bit of a rhythm on offense. Michael O’Connell was up to 7 points for Stanford on 3-6 shooting from the field and 1-3 shooting from 3-point range. Sam Beskind had a nice bucket inside while Maxime Raynaud had a triple.

Stanford wouldn’t close the gap any further as Arizona led 38-22 with 2:52 to go in the half. Arizona was shooting 14-25 (56.0%) from the field while Stanford was shooting 9-27 (33.3%). It was really crucial for Stanford to see if they could cut the game to single digits before halftime.

At halftime, Arizona led 42-31. Harrison Ingram was finally getting involved for Stanford, hitting a tough 3-pointer right before the buzzer sounded. Stanford needed that badly. He was up to 5 points. Jones (9 points) and O’Connell (8 points) were leading Stanford while Mathurin’s 13 points was leading Arizona. Stanford was fortunate the game was as close as it was.

While the first half obviously didn’t go the way Stanford wanted it to, we have seen Stanford come back before after a shaky first half. However, this would not be one of those nights. Arizona quickly expanded their lead 55-36 with 15:57 to go as Ballo was up to 12 points. Stanford senior Jaiden Delaire just committed a charge inside, which felt like the 20th charge of the night. The officials seemed to enjoy calling charges on both teams, making it hard for the game to have a good flow.

Arizona continued to dominate as they would lead 64-38 with 11:38 to go. Arizona was outscoring Stanford 22-7 in the second half. Ingram was still stuck on 5 points for Stanford while Ballo was up to 15 points for Arizona. This one looked over.

“I think why we were playing bad was a byproduct of them playing really well and dictating the terms of the game and we were not able to respond,” Haase said. “So I think it’s probably a combination.”

With 7:55 to go, Arizona led 68-42. The only thing that had gone wrong all night for Arizona was losing Azuolas Tubelis. Aside from that, it was a beautiful night for them. Ballo (15 points), Mathurin (13 points), and Larsson (11 points) were all in double figures. No Stanford players were in double figures.

With 3:29 to go, Arizona led 77-52. The only question now was what the final score would be and whether or not Jarvis Moss or some other player who rarely sees minutes for Stanford would score. Aside from that, this was signed, sealed, and delivered as the Motown song says.

In the end, Arizona walked out with an 85-57 win. The only thing that went right for Stanford was their 42-39 rebounding victory, but they weren’t able to convert those into points in the paint as Arizona dominated that department 48-20. And if you look at the final score, that’s really the game right there. Arizona won by 28 points and they outscored Stanford by 28 points in the paint.

From the jump, this game was one-way traffic in favor of Arizona, who came out energetic like a pack of wild-eyed hyenas. The hyena is a fierce and aggressive creature. Usually most active at night. When a wildebeest is within their sights, they’ll gang up on it and more often than not it’s lights out for the wildebeest. The same was the case tonight at Maples. With an 8:00 PM tipoff, Arizona was the aggressive pack of hyenas that thrived in the night while Stanford was the poor wildebeest that got wiped-out.

One other thing I should mention before I wrap up this recap is that the officiating in this game was wack. I’ve been covering college hoops for a good while now and been watching basketball for as far back as I can remember. Never have I seen a game with so many charge calls. And it wasn’t like they were favoring one team over the other. If every time a charge is called an angel gets its wings, there are a lot of angels smiling down from heaven after this game.

“Offensively we wanna do everything we can,” Haase said when asked about the high volume of charge calls dished about by the officials. “Against pressure you can’t just sit there and pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. There is a situation where you have to put the ball on the ground. So we wanted our guys to be able to do that, but then come to the stop and make plays for others. But we put our head down and there were some, obviously a bunch of our turnovers were the offensive fouls and yeah, it’s part of the game and credit Arizona for taking a bunch of them.”

I rarely make complaints about officiating after games. This might be the first time and hopefully the last time I do it, but this is a game where I feel compelled as a journalist to speak out. Everyone who knows basketball knows that the block/charge call is the hardest call to make and that typically, they’re 50/50 calls. Some are called as charges; some are called as blocks. It depends on the play and usually it’s a case of you win some, you lose some.

In the case of this game, it felt like rather than trying to fairly adjudicate each individual block/charge call, the refs instead decided to just call everything a charge no matter what, getting a power-trip at the expense of doing what’s right for the game. In the middle of the game, those of us on press row came to expect a charge call whenever a defensive player slid in front of an offensive player. Even if the defender didn’t appear to be set.

And I need to stress this was not all in favor of Arizona. Stanford had their share of charge calls go their way, too. And to Arizona’s credit, they were hip to what the refs were doing long before Stanford was. So by no means can this be used as an excuse for why Stanford got taken to the woodshed. Still, it needs to be called out and hopefully this officiating crew will be questioned by the head of Pac-12 officiating on why they seemed to take so much joy in calling charges in this game.

Going back to the play between Stanford and Arizona, I have to give a lot of credit to Arizona. I thought Stanford had a real shot to win this game given their undefeated home record and their impressive home wins over Oregon and then-No.5 USC. Arizona made me look like a fool for picking Stanford. They were the more athletic team, the more talented team, the more fundamentally sound team, and the team that was better coached. Just all-around, they were better and they deserve my full respect.

As for Stanford, this was disappointing. There would have been no shame in losing this game, but to get waxed like this isn’t good. They never got into a rhythm, they let Arizona’s pressure bother them, and they also allowed Arizona to dominate them in the paint. They were never in this game and with so few opportunities for signature wins left, they have to be kicking themselves for how this game went. Players, coaches, everybody.

At this point, all that Stanford can do is move on from this game, see what they can learn from it, and not let this be the beginning of a downward spiral. Stanford as a whole is having a solid season up to this point. In addition to the wins over USC and Oregon, they have an impressive win at Washington State and two solid wins at the Diamond Head Classic. When they play together as a team and buy into Jerod Haase’s game plan, they can hang with anyone in the Pac-12 (with the exception of Arizona).

“We need to learn from this, compartmentalize it, and move on quickly,” Haase said. “What we don’t want to do is have a poor performance today dictate how we play on Saturday.”

Up next for Stanford is a home game on Saturday against Arizona State. A game that they really need to win. That game will tip-off at 8:00 PM PT on FS1 and Cardinal Sports Network radio.

Note: Sophomore guard Noah Taitz was out with a lower-leg injury and is considered day-to-day. Jerod Haase says there’s a chance he play on Saturday, but no guarantees. They’ll see how he responds on Friday and go from there.

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