On Wednesday, Stanford men’s basketball defeated Valparaiso 74-60. Stanford sophomore forward Brandon Angel led the way for the Cardinal with a career-high 13 points on 4-5 shooting from the field and 3-4 shooting from 3-point range while sophomore guard Noah Taitz finished with 11 points on 4-7 shooting from the field and 3-5 shooting from 3-point range. Valparaiso guard Trevor Anderson was the top scorer for the Beacons with 18 points and 10 rebounds, finishing with a double-double. Stanford improves to 3-1 on the season while Valparaiso falls to 0-3.
“It was great to have Coach Lottich back and a Valparaiso team that I think is going to get better and better as the year goes on,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game, giving a nod to Stanford alum and Valparaiso head coach Matt Lottich. “They’re going to have a couple more players a little bit later and I think they’re going to be a force in their league for sure. Well coached team and it certainly was nice to have him back.
“As the game went along our start was what we’ve been looking for. We’ve been, last time I was up on this podium we talked about some of the slow starts that we’ve had. And I think the start we had was a real key to the game and the guys that started had great energy, I thought had great passion, I thought they followed the game plan really well. Throughout the rest of the game there’s probably many instances of things I can take away and we can take away that are positives and I think there’s going to be a lot of things that we can go back and say look, we lost our edge defensively or we didn’t do the fundamentals defensively or we took a shot or made a play that was, I’m not going to say selfish, but wasn’t looking for a teammate first. Those are the things we need to learn from and learn from quickly.”
One of the key points of emphasis for Stanford coming into this game was getting off to better starts and they did just that, leading 12-1 with 16:27 to go in the first half. Freshman center Maxime Raynaud had four of those points, knocking down a pair of free throws and getting a second chance dunk. Junior forward Spencer Jones was also on the board with a triple, which was nice for the Cardinal to see given the poor start he’s had this year beyond the arc.
“I think the guys executed the plan,” Haase said of the great start. “It’s not like our plan is a whole lot different game in, game out. We know what we’re trying to do. We know the plays we’re trying to run and I think the guys that were on the floor took the message and applied it really well.”
With 11:36 to go in the half, Stanford led 17-8. The Cardinal were shooting 6-11 from the field. It was a good start offensively. Spencer Jones was up to five points while Brandon Angel was on the board with a triple.
Stanford would then go up 25-11 with 7:50 to go in the half. It was a much better start for the Cardinal tonight, who were on a 6-0 run over the last 37 seconds. Taitz was heating up with 6 points on 2-2 shooting from beyond the arc.
The good vibes continued for the Cardinal as Stanford led 33-16 with 3:36 to go in the half. Stanford was shooting 13-26 (50.0%) from the field and 4-8 from 3-point range. Jones was up to 7 points on 1-2 shooting from 3-point range. It was huge for Stanford to get him rolling.
At halftime, Stanford led 39-23. It was really good energy from the Cardinal. It was definitely their best first half of the season and as a whole, there wasn’t really a lot to dislike if you were them.
“I think it just started off with our mindset in the locker room before the game,” Taitz said of the key to their better start. “Like coach was saying, we gotta come out and punch first. Like you mentioned, we’ve started off so far this year, in the first few games, it’s been a rough start, so tonight our mentality was to punch first.”
Stanford continued to dominate to start the second half as they would go up 61-41 with 9:38 to go. Brandon Angel was up to his career-high 13 points, leading the way for the Cardinal. At this point, it was pretty much a sure thing Stanford would win. The only question was by how many points.
“Credit to the teammates,” Angel said. “I mean, they kept me confident, I hadn’t been shooting the ball great and they stayed with me the whole time, so that definitely helped.”
Nothing really changed over the next few minutes, which was good for Stanford as they led 71-51 with 5:10 to go. Taitz was now up to 11 points. Stanford was shooting 24-47 (51.1%) from the field, 10-19 (52.6%) from 3-point range, and 13-16 (81.3%) from the foul line. It was a collectively great offensive performance.
“It was great for both of them to make the first one and have some in rhythm threes,” Haase said of Angel and Taitz’ 3-point shooting. “Also the great part was teammates were looking for them. And it’s hard to make threes when every one is under duress and I think a lot of their threes were clean looks where the pass was on time and on target, their feet are ready, and they are really good shooters and I think through the offense, through the teammates, we need to be able to get clean shots for our guys. Look, if those guys are making shots, it does add another dimension and another dynamic to our offense.”
In the end, Stanford walked out with a 74-60 win with Brandon Angel and Noah Taitz being their top two scorers. As a whole, this was a really nice win for Stanford considering the balance they got across the board in terms of scoring. 12 different guys scored and there were 18 assists in total, five coming from Isa Silva and five coming from Harrison Ingram, who had a relatively quiet night with just 4 points to go along with his assists. Getting off to a better start and bringing more energy was obviously needed and they did that tonight.
“I do think we’re trending up,” Haase said. “My anticipation and my plan is we’re going to continue to do that knowing there’s going to be ebbs and flows, knowing we have a big time competition coming up this weekend. But we understand that if we stick to the plan, if we stick together, we believe in each other, that there’s no reason we can’t trend in the positive direction.”
One thing that Jerod Haase did that was interesting was he decided to bring Harrison Ingram off the bench purely for the sake of experimentation. Given the result, one can’t exactly say he made a bad decision, though Haase stressed he doesn’t foresee many nights where he’ll be bringing his McDonald’s All-American freshman off the bench.
“Yeah, those are kinda the fun things as a coach, I just get to make decisions and as a head coach, I would just label it just a coach’s decision,” Haase said of having Ingram come off the bench. “One thing I’ve said with him and I’ll say many many times is one: he’s coachable and one can handle just about anything I throw at him to this point. But, he handled it great. I don’t anticipate him being on the bench and we’re going to have him out there a lot.”
Up next for Stanford will be a road game at #9 Baylor on Saturday. That game will tipoff at 10:00 AM PT on ESPN+/Big XII Now and Cardinal Sports Network radio.
