On Sunday December 3rd, Stanford men’s basketball defeated San Diego 88-64 at home. Stanford senior forward Brandon Angel led the way for the Cardinal with a career-high 25 points and eight rebounds while graduate student guard Michael Jones (19 points & 3 rebounds) and fifth year forward Spencer Jones (16 points & 6 rebounds) also finished in double figures. San Diego guard Dragos Lungu led the way for the Toreros with 11 points.
BOX SCORE: San Diego at Stanford-Sunday, December 3rd
VIDEO: Stanford MBB Postgame Press Conference | San Diego
“Big picture these next couple weeks are going to be an exceptionally important time for us to improve as a team,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “My job as a coach is to teach and get our team to perform at a certain level and I thought tonight we'll have some takeaways that are positives, but I think there are some things especially in the second-half that we need to clean up and that's on my shoulders to make sure my teaching is the best it can possibly be, but also the guys are accountable for executing those plays on both ends of the floor.
"We're certainly thrilled with the win and get off the losing streak we were on from the Bahamas, guys have last week of classes and then finals coming up and so that's always a stressful time for our guys, but it's also a time, we’ll certainly give them time to study and focus on their academic side, but we also need to make sure that we use every tool in the toolbox to make sure we're improving over the next couple of weeks.”
Stanford got off to a solid start, leading 17-10 with 11:39 to go in the first half. Michael Jones was leading the Cardinal with six points on 2-5 shooting from 3-point range, doing a nice job of knocking down his shots. The Cardinal could have been up by a bit more, but all things considered, this was a nice start.
With 6:24 to go in the half, Stanford led 30-17. Brandon Angel was starting to get his wings as he was up to 13 points and four rebounds while Michael Jones was up to nine points. Stanford’s solid start continued.
“Our number one key to the game was turn out, play outside yourself, don’t just be thinking about yourself,” Angel said. “And I think that really showed from the beginning of the game. Extra passes, the ball was moving, and I mean, all the looks I got today were wide open layups, wide open shots, and the guys found me, so it really made an easy game offensively.”
Stanford would lead 35-21 with 3:17 to go until halftime. Stanford was continuing to maintain a healthy lead. At halftime, Stanford led 43-27. Angel was up to 15 points and six rebounds while Michael Jones had 11 points. Spencer Jones was also starting to get going a bit with seven points after a nice dunk inside.
“Yeah, Spencer for a variety of reasons, I feel like we have a bunch of like duct tape and you know super glue and everything else kind of putting him back together again,” Haase said. “But he was out there today and looked good, felt good, I think he was excited about just feeling like he could go out and he was physically in a place that he could perform. So I think that was the number one thing, but he played great as we've seen through his entire tenure here, he works his tail off and easy to cheer for and it was nice to see him have some success with scoring the basketball.”
San Diego came out with a good amount of energy in the second half, trimming Stanford’s lead to 11 points (49-38) with 15:03 to go. Angel was up to 17 points and eight rebounds, doing his part to keep the Cardinal in front. Stanford needed to regroup a bit as San Diego was on an 11-6 run to open the half.
Stanford would push their lead up a bit to lead 59-42 with 11:47 to go. Angel was really starting to take flight with a heavenly 22 points and eight rebounds on 8-11 shooting from the field, 2-4 shooting from 3-point range, and 4-4 shooting from the foul line. Andrej Stojakovic also had a nice bucket inside as he got fouled, though he was unable to convert the 3-point play.
“Yeah, he was really good,” Haase said of Angel. “Efficient as can be. Couple of the turnovers we’ve gotta eliminate. We’ve talked about him really second half of last year leading into this year, his efficiency on the offensive end is off the charts. Really making a lot of good plays. Making the right plays. Not just good plays, but the right plays. Guy’s open, he’s hitting them, he’s open himself, he’s shooting the basketball. He can score inside and out and so we’re seeing that versatility today.”
Stanford would lead 70-51 with 7:56 to go. Angel was up to 25 points and eight rebounds while Michael Jones had 17 points. Stanford was doing a nice job of moving the ball with 18 assists and 10 turnovers.
“I mean generally speaking the guys, it is an unselfish group that's willing to make the extra pass,” Haase said of his team. “I thought you know in the in the first half, I thought we shot a lot of good shots. The dream maybe in certain situations is turn down a good shot to get a great shot. Wasn't disappointed in the shot attempts and obviously we did build the lead in the first half, defensively we've made a major emphasis on boxing out and the rebounding piece I was encouraged the first 10 minutes, after that it was probably discouraged.
“The good news with that though is that it shows that the emphasis from this past week did latch on for a little bit and now we need to latch it on for 40 minutes as opposed to 10 minutes. But yeah, encouraged with the as you said a wire to wire lead and we can build off some of those positives for sure.”
In the end, Stanford would walk out with an 88-64 victory. Towards the very end of the game, Stanford redshirt freshman Jaylen Thompson rattled home a corner three. He’s been working hard on those, so it was cool for him to get a bit of confidence in his shot by watching that fall.
“And I mean this very sincerely, it means the world,” Haase said of watching Thompson make that three. “He has worked so hard since he’s been here, I do think there’s really some bright days ahead for him, and so seeing albeit a small bit of success, makes me feel good. It’s kinda like hey, there’s a carrot out there that more of those moments can come, but I think the absolute world of him as a scholar athlete, as a person, and it’s really fun to see him out there and again, having that shot go in was nice.”
For Stanford, this game actually went better than expected. They were favored by 13-14 points, so to win this game by 20+ points feels good. The offense was clicking all night long and then the defense didn’t allow San Diego to get rolling. All around a good team victory. Especially considering the way they got blasted in the Bahamas.
“Yeah, obviously that last game in the Bahamas is not Stanford basketball,” Angel said. “It’s not the brand of basketball we wanna play and to be honest, we were all quite disgusted with how that game turned out. How we played throughout the course of the game. It was unacceptable and had that taste in your mouth coming into today. We knew we need to respond and it’s always good to get back in the win column.”
Up next for Stanford will be a home game on Sunday, December 17th against Idaho. That will tipoff at 2:00 PM PT on Pac-12 Networks.
“Obviously, we see these two weeks as a great opportunity to get better,” Angel said of the break. “Obviously no games, so focusing on practice, coming in with intensity, we’ve identified a lot of areas where we want to improve and two weeks is a great opportunity to get that done before our next game. All the guys, we trust each other to take care of business in the classroom, so it’s on all of us taking care of our business in the classroom and then step between the lines for practice. We’ve gotta get better day in and day out.”
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