On Saturday, Stanford men’s basketball upset #4 Arizona at home by a final score of 88-79. Stanford junior point guard Michael O’Connell had a career-high 22 points on 6-10 shooting from the field, 3-5 shooting from 3-point range, and 7-12 shooting from the foul line while senior forward Spencer Jones had 18 points and 6 rebounds. Arizona fifth-year guard Courtney Ramey went off for 26 points, 6 rebounds, and 5 assists on 9-18 shooting from the field and 8-16 shooting from 3-point range.
This is Stanford’s first win over a top-four opponent since January 28th, 2007, which was a win over #3 UCLA. This is also Stanford’s first win over a top-four Arizona team since January 10th, 2004 in Tucson when Arizona was ranked #3. Stanford improves to 11-14 overall and 5-9 in the Pac-12 while Arizona falls to 22-4 overall and 11-4 in the Pac-12.
Video: Stanford Men’s Basketball: Postgame Press Conference | Arizona
Highlights: Stanford MBB upsets #4 Arizona
Box Score: #4 Arizona at Stanford
“I’ll keep my initial statement pretty quick: My feelings, my thoughts are extremely simple right now. I am thrilled for our guys,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said after the game. “They’ve had a lot of challenges, we’ve had a lot of challenges, and man, they stuck with it. And through good times and bad, my guess is we’ll have some smiles moving forward and some tough times moving forward and what we’re gonna do is stick together like we’ve done. But, I believe this deep in my soul, is these guys deserve some positive feelings and this is certainly a positive one.”
Stanford got off to a solid start, leading 10-8 with 15:17 to go in the first half. Maxime Raynaud was up to 5 points for the Cardinal on 2-2 shooting from the field including a nice 3-pointer. The Cardinal came out with a good deal of energy and it was paying off.
Arizona would then take a one point 18-17 lead with 11:22 to go in the half. Ramey was leading the Wildcats with 9 points on 3-5 shooting from 3-point range, making all of their 3-pointers so far. Arizona was shooting 3-9 from 3-point range while Stanford was shooting 3-5.
With 6:55 to go in the half, Stanford led 28-26, doing a nice job of retaking the lead. Harrison Ingram was up to 8 points after a nice turnaround jumper plus the foul. Stanford was out-rebounding Arizona 10-8.
Stanford would continue to stay in front, leading 35-31 with 3:58 to go in the half. Michael O’Connell had a nice reverse layup inside while Michael Jones had a pretty cut and layup inside. Stanford continued to win the glass with a 12-10 rebounding edge.
Arizona would then go on a 13-0 run to lead 44-35 before O’Connell finally hit a 3-pointer to make it a 44-38 game with 1:00 to go. With 12.7 to go, it would be a 44-39 lead for Arizona as O’Connell was able to go 1-2 at the foul line. Stanford had the ball and needed to up something good out of the time out.
Stanford did what they needed to do out of that timeout as Raynaud got a nice bucket inside to make it a 44-41 game at halftime. Raynaud was up to 9 points. Stanford was hanging tough. Ingram (2 fouls) needed to stay out of foul trouble in the second half.
“Yeah, I think our whole team had a lot of poise,” O’Connell said. “We’ve been in moments before, throughout this season when we’ve taken punches from teams, they went on a run, but we always kept our composure and I think throughout the season we’ve been doing that. You get ready for those moments as you experience them, so I think, I mean the guys did a great job, no one turned on each other, no one started yelling, everyone just got closer together, we huddled up, we talked everything out, our rotations, and we just kept communicating.”
With 15:42 to go, Arizona led 54-49. Ramey was going WILD for Arizona with 17 points, 4 rebounds, and 4 assists. Raynaud was leading the way for Stanford with 11 points and 4 rebounds. Arizona was still in front, but Stanford was staying within striking distance.
With 11:17 to go, Arizona led 59-58 as Stanford narrowed the gap to one point. Ramey was doing his part to keep the Wildcats in front with 20 points while O’Connell was up to 12 points for the Cardinal. Stanford was giving Arizona all they could handle.
“I mean, I was just playing,” O’Connell said. “I kinda lost myself in the game, I feel like our whole team kinda just went out there and lost themselves in the game. I mean, we work for this every day. It’s kinda, I mean it’s great to get a win like that, but I don’t think it comes at a surprise really, either. I think we’re always working hard for moments like these. We got it done tonight.”
Arizona would continue to lead by one point (66-65) with 7:54 left in the game. Ramey was up to 23 points, having himself a whale of a game. Spencer Jones was now up to 16 points for the Cardinal. After being held scoreless in the first half, he was in a real groove offensively.
“Yeah, I mean I could tell early on their game plan was trying to just not let me get the ball,” Jones said. “I’ll look at the tape, see whether I could be more aggressive, but we were rocking on offense. So I didn’t feel the need to [score in the first half]. But second half I knew I was gonna have to put up a performance to maintain our lead and win this game. And so I came out and knew I was next time take the ball and shooting it and it went in and went from there.”
Stanford would then take the lead, going up 70-66 with 6:52 to go. Spencer Jones was up to 18 points after a bucket inside. Brandon Angel was up to 10 points after getting a huge 3-point play.
Stanford would lead 72-69 with 4:44 to go. Ingram had big-time bucket inside for Stanford, giving him 10 points. Ramey now had 26 points for Arizona. He was doing all he could to keep his team in the game.
“Look, he’s a big-time player, had a great game,” Haase said of Ramey’s 3-point performance. “Some of them may have been some slow rotations on our part, but many of them were contested and hats off to him. That’s impressive.”
Over the next minute and change, momentum shifted strongly in favor of the Cardinal. Ingram had a huge steal plus the bucket inside while O’Connell nailed a clutch corner three. It was now a 79-69 lead for the Cardinal with 3:27 to go. The Wildcats were now in some trouble.
“You could feel the energy in the gym,” O’Connell said of that sequence. “The whole, everyone’s moods kinda changed. It kinda lifts your team up, everyone gets more confidence in the offensive side and the defensive side. The rotations seem to get a little faster, just the energy’s flowing, adrenaline’s flowing, and then obviously you have the crowd playing into it, which is always helpful. But yeah, I think it always helps to pick you up if you’re down or gets you even higher from where you are. So the momentum is definitely huge for us.”
With 1:15 to go, Arizona still had a pulse after a four-point play by Kerr Kriisa. That made it an 83-77 game. Stanford had the ball and needed to make sure they didn’t fumble this game away.
To Stanford’s credit, they found a way to hang on and actually nearly won by double digits as they walked out with an 88-79 victory. Arizona made a bit of a push at the end, but the steal and finish by Ingram and then the corner three by O’Connell is what sealed the deal.
For Arizona, this loss is pretty bad in terms of what it means for their NCAA tournament resume. They’re trying to earn a number one seed in the tournament and this is the kind of loss that could end those hopes for them. Plus, they are now two games back of UCLA in the loss column for first place in the Pac-12. If they don’t win the Pac-12 tournament, they could be looking at a three seed in the tournament or possibly even a four. This loss could be that crippling. Especially when you consider their other losses.
“Well hey, obviously had a rough day for Arizona and Stanford deserves a ton of credit and they came in with a game plan and it worked,” Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd said. “We weren’t able to flip the script and we had some good stretches in there, but obviously not nearly enough. So, tip my hat to Stanford and Arizona goes back to the drawing board.”
The big thing Stanford did to frustrate Arizona was defend the paint really well, holding Oumar Ballo and Azuolas Tubelis to a combined 12 points and 4 rebounds. With those guys defended well, that forced Arizona to shoot a lot more threes than they would have wanted.
“They did a good job taking away the paint and you switching ball screens and we shot thirty five threes and that’s just, I don’t know if that’s a winning formula for us,” Lloyd admitted. “I mean a lot of them were pretty good shots, obviously Courtney got hot and made a bunch of them, we’ll have to evaluate that and when teams do that defensively against us, traditionally we’ve had success, but today we didn’t.”
As for Stanford, to call this win huge is an understatement. They needed this win just from a morale standpoint. The season has not gone the way they’d want it to go as a whole, but this win has to make them feel rewarded for their efforts to band together and not give up. This and the win at Utah both show that when they play up to their maximum potential, they have an ability to hang with just about anybody in the country.
“This is a big game for us,” Haase said. “And in a lot of different ways, and we will enjoy that tonight and understand the reasons why it’s big, but at the end of the day the message to the team is it’s a big game because it was today’s game and it was a step forward for us and we’ve talked all year about making progress, all the cliches you want to throw out there, one day at time, keep moving forward, whatever it is, but we’ve lived those things, and we’re trying to get better, and even in some of our losses, no definitely in some of our losses, I could leave and say you know, we did take a step forward in this way or this way and I’m well aware the winning part matters. But this year we’ve really kinda taken the approach of we’re trying to trend upward for the entire year and today obviously was a big step forward.”
Up next for Stanford is a road trip to the City of Angels. First game of that trip will be on Thursday at UCLA. Tipoff is set for 8:00 PM PT on ESPN2.
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