On Tuesday, Stanford men’s basketball defeated the North Carolina A&T Aggies 79-65. Sophomore forward Max Murrell led the way for the Cardinal with a career-high 18 points off the bench on 6-8 shooting from the field and 4-6 shooting from 3-point range while freshman forward Harrison Ingram finished with 14 points and 10 rebounds, his second career double-double. Graduate transfer guard David Beatty was the top performer for the Aggies with 13 points on 5-10 shooting from the field and 3-7 shooting from 3-point range. Stanford improves to 4-2 overall while North Carolina A&T falls to 1-5.

“I want to thank North Carolina A&T just kinda how this home and home started when we were stuck in North Carolina last year and they were willing and able to host us for a game and then were willing to come out here as well,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “I think it’s a win-win situation for us for sure and I think hopefully they gained something out of it, too. But appreciate their hospitality of last year and appreciate them working with us in a really tough time last year.

“They certainly did some nice things. Was a little bit disappointed in our three-point defense. They obviously shot a lot of them, but to give up 10 threes, I wanted a little bit better closeouts and contests than we had. I thought there was a lot of ebb and flow to the game today. We’d build a lead and then struggle, but at the end of the day in the second half, I think Noah, Max Murrell, and James Keefe provided a real spark for us and I think that was really a turning point in the game and their energy fed to others and I do think a lot of times as coaches we get bogged down with x’s and o’s, we get bogged down with strategy, and a lot of times just energy and communication is a great starting point for good things to happen.”

Stanford rolled with a starting five of Michael O’Connell, Jaiden Delaire, Spencer Jones, Maxime Raynaud, and Harrison Ingram in this game. Stanford head coach Jerod Haase is still figuring out his rotation and so far has been pretty experimental when it comes to his lineups.

Stanford would lead 7-6 with 15:30 to go in the first half. Raynaud was on the board with a 3-pointer for the Cardinal. Stanford was shooting 3-8 from the field while N.C. A&T was shooting 2-6. It was a rough shooting start for both teams.

Stanford soon picked it up, leading 17-8 with 11:43 to go in the half. Raynaud was up to 5 points and 1 rebound for Stanford. Despite shooting 7-18 (38.9%) from the field, Stanford looked like they were starting to pull away.

Stanford would then go up 25-13 with 7:22 to go in the half. Murrell was starting to heat up for the Cardinal with 6 points on 2-3 shooting from deep. Stanford was dominating the glass 19-12.

With 3:00 to go in the half, Stanford led 29-21 as N.C. A&T was creeping back a bit. It was 0 points for Stanford in the last 2:41. Beatty was leading the Aggies and all scorers with 9 points. Stanford was shooting 11-32 from the field and 3-13 from 3-point range. The offense needed to pick up.

At halftime, Stanford would lead 35-26. Max Murrell and Spencer Jones each had 6 points for the Cardinal while David Beatty was leading the Aggies with 9 points. Stanford wasn’t playing great, but they at least had a 9 point cushion.

Stanford would increase their lead 42-32 with 15:46 to go. Delaire was up to 8 points and 4 rebounds for the Cardinal while Beatty was up to 11 points for the Aggies. Ingram had 6 points and 8 rebounds for the Cardinal. Ideally, he’d be doing a bit more scoring as he was offensively having a bit of a quiet night so far.

Back-to-back 3-pointers from Milton Matthews and Demetric Horton cut Stanford’s lead to just 4 points as it became a 44-40 game with 13:34 to go. Stanford needed to wake up and put the Aggies away.

“I think the message has been consistent for us throughout the year,” James Keefe said when asked what the message was as the Aggies made their run. “We say be nasty and it’s whatever it is, it’s finding the edge, finding that grit, being nasty. It’s that toughness to rip through and make plays and get the 50/50 balls and get offensive rebounds and I think that started to click for us midway through the second half and after halftime. And in spurts, coach tells us and we know to be great, we’re going to have to sustain that edge for the whole game. But it kinda clicked for a couple minutes there and then all that defensive stuff and toughness stuff translates to the offensive end and Max was filling it up and it kinda went from there.”

Stanford would respond a bit to lead 51-43 with 11:57 to go. Ingram got a really nice tip in, which got him up to 10 points and 9 rebounds. He was starting to get going at a time when Stanford really needed him to.

“He’s fantastic,” Haase said of Ingram. “He’s game ready physically, he makes others better, as time goes on, we’re going to want the ball in his hands more and more and more. And he flat out makes other people better, is skilled enough to score the basketball himself, has a great presence with what he’s doing and he’s off to a great start this year knowing that he has room for improvement, too. Especially on the defensive end of the floor. And that’s my job is to coach him hard and see if we can help develop him even more. But he’s off to a great start and I feel very fortunate that he’s with us.”

Over the next few minutes, Stanford started to pull away for good. Michael O’Connell found James Keefe for a nice slam in transition. Keefe was up to 6 points as Stanford was on a 9-0 run over the last 2:11. Stanford was up 62-49 with 7:12 to go.

“James was fantastic,” Haase said of Keefe, who finished the game with 8 points and 6 rebounds. “In the timeouts, I kept talking about the bigs communicating on defense, making sure the ball screen coverages were right, and then securing rebounds. A pretty simple game plan for our bigs there and I thought he did a great job of embracing the message and then getting out there and communicating. It’s pretty cool when the defense is on the opposite side of the floor and we can hear him talking on the ball screen coverages and communicating that effectively. So his energy was fantastic. He was a big piece of when things started turning around.”

“To be honest, I think James right here was a big part of that,” Murrell said of the key to pulling away in the second half. “He brought a lot of energy on defense. Obviously there was some shot making, but I think his defense and his rebounding and talk was elite and I think it helped us a lot.”

With 3:58 to go, Stanford led 71-54. Murrell was now up to 13 points for Stanford while Ingram was leading the way with 14 points and 10 rebounds. Noah Taitz would soon get Murrell up to 15 points, throwing him a nice alley-oop. Taitz earlier had a nice throw down of his own. Both guys were challenging the stereotype that white men can’t jump.

“Confidence comes from work,” Haase said when asked about Murrell’s performance. “And certainly from success, but really work and I’m a big believer in that and I think our team this year, we’re going to gain confidence as the year goes on because of the work we’re going to put in. Max he shoots with a great deal of confidence because of the work he’s put in. He’s a tireless worker, his fundamentals are great, and because of that, when he goes in the game, if he misses a shot, it tends not to faze him, because he knows that he’s capable, he knows that he’s ready, he knows he’s put the work in, and I look for more of that moving forward.”

In the end, Stanford walked out with a 79-65 victory. It wasn’t a blowout by any means, but it also wasn’t a close game. It was an overall comfortable win that had a couple of bumps along the way. Which you’ll take in games like this. The goal is just to not lose or make things too interesting and Stanford accomplished that.

As for Max Murrell, scoring a career-high 18 points felt good. He’s worked really hard and to see his hard work pay off in such a tangible way felt good and should give him even more confidence as the season goes on.

“It feels probably about as good as you’d think it would,” Murrell said. “I got some of the guys on staff, they’ve been telling me how confident they are in me and that the believe in me and then this was kind of a long time coming with all the work I’ve been putting in. So, I just really appreciate them for giving me the confidence and then people like James on our team give us the energy whether it’s offense or defense, it always translates with the momentum. Yeah, it’s a really great feeling, my parents were out in the stands, so I’m really glad I got to share that with them.”

Up next for Stanford will be a road game at Colorado on Sunday to open up Pac-12 play. That game will tipoff at 4:00 PM PT on Pac-12 Networks and Cardinal Sports Network radio.

“I think that this spurt was six games in fourteen days, which is a lot by any measure,” Keefe said. “And now it’s going to be nice, I think one to, we’ll take Thanksgiving Day off, but we’ll also have tomorrow and Friday and Saturday three spirited and hard practices that will hopefully help us scout Colorado, but also just get better as a team and continue to progress every day.”

Note: Jerod Haase provided an update on redshirt junior forward Keenan Fitzmorris who has been in a boot: “Keenan, he does have a foot injury. He’ll be out indefinitely, a few weeks is probably the timetable with him. So he’s in a boot and he will be in a boot for a little bit.”