Stanford MBB needs to do some soul-searching
After getting swept by Utah and Colorado on Senior Day weekend, it was clear that Stanford men’s basketball was in a bad spot. They came into that week on the outside looking in on the NCAA tournament bubble, but there was still a flicker of hope. They got the road split the week before at the Oregon schools, playing Oregon tough and taking care of business at Oregon State like an NCAA tournament level team should. Holding serve against Utah and Colorado was of paramount importance and while not a slam dunk, it seemed doable. Utah came in as one of the worst teams in the Pac-12 with just two league wins and Colorado was a team who Stanford played tough on the road up in Boulder earlier in the year.
The Utah game started off promising as Stanford led for much of the game, but they faded late, dropping that contest 60-56. And then on Senior Day, after their senior lineup gave them a spirited start, Stanford ended up getting boat raced in the second half, losing 70-53. The loss to Utah dashed any hopes of an NCAA tournament appearance, but there were hopes of a bounce back performance on Senior Day purely on the grounds of pride. Nobody likes to lose on Senior Day. You want to win that game for its own sake. Not only did Stanford lose on Senior Day, they got dominated. They seemed to lose their will to live at the end. An embarrassing display considering what was at stake.
But…Michael O’Connell wasn’t at full strength. The sophomore point guard is the engine that makes them go on offense. Maybe this was simply a case of their starting point guard’s health being a bigger factor than I realized it was. After all, we saw how badly Stanford football did when Tanner McKee went down. You lose your point guard and/or he’s not at one hundred percent, that’s a big deal.
With a week off for O’Connell to rest up and get ready, surely Stanford would come out with fire and energy against their rival Cal. It was their Senior Night and it would have felt good to spoil their big night. Get a little pay back. And on top of that, Cal isn’t a good team. It’s basically the Jordan Shepherd show right now and that’s it. Stop one guy and you have them beat. That shouldn’t be hard, I thought.
So when I walked into Haas Pavilion at halftime after having come up from the Stanford women’s basketball Senior Day (a game that they found a way to win), my jaw dropped to the floor for two reasons: Haas Pavilion was packed (something I haven’t seen there since the Jaylen Brown/Ivan Rabb years) and Cal was up 35-12.
To Cal’s credit, they came out for their Senior Day like it was their national championship game. Student section was packed, Cal legends were in the building, etc. It was an electric atmosphere. Cal AD Jim Knowlton was fired up in the hallways afterwards, clearly proud of the progress he feels head coach Mark Fox has made in his third year in Berkeley.
As for the score, 35-12 is shocking. At any level. It’s shocking in high school, it’s shocking in college, it’s shocking in the NBA, it’s even shocking in Mormon church basketball. You just don’t see it very often. Especially when the team up big is the team with the inferior record. I don’t care how electric the atmosphere was in Berkeley and I once again give Cal full props for that, you don’t get down 35-12 at halftime. Especially when you are the team with the better record and the better roster on paper.
As bad as getting swept at home was the week prior, getting rocked like Amadeus at Cal took things to a whole new low for this Stanford program. Talking to Stanford head coach Jerod Haase post-game, you could tell that he knew this as well. He looked dejected in a way I haven’t seen him all year. His final words to me were: “All of this falls on my shoulders and big shoulders and I’ll figure it out.”
First of all, I sincerely want to commend Jerod Haase for taking the time to talk to me post-game. He handled the loss with a lot of class. He gave Cal the credit they deserve and took responsibility for his team not coming out as they should have. Some coaches after a loss like that wouldn’t talk to the press or handle themselves in such a professional manner.
Secondly, a loss like this has to result in some serious soul-searching by this Stanford program. How do they want this season to be remembered? What are they really about as a program? Are they a program that takes pride in how they perform on the court? Are they a program that values competing for a full 40 minutes? If you were to ask them, they’d of course say yes and they’d mean it sincerely. And yet the results of these last three games indicate that something isn’t working. Something isn’t clicking. They’ve lost their mojo.
It's important to remember this is a Stanford team that won both of their games at the Diamond Head Classic, beat Oregon at the buzzer, swept USC, and snatched victory from the jaws of defeat multiple times. They’ve shown resolve. They’ve shown resiliency. They’ve shown toughness. And yet, they seem to have lost it and it’s not at all clear if they’ll get it back.
Ultimately, this does fall on the shoulders of head coach Jerod Haase. He’s the one getting paid big-time money to coach this team. Reaching the NCAA tournament is the goal. That’s what he was brought to The Farm to do. So far, he hasn’t accomplished that and even more alarmingly, his team appears to have come totally off the rails down the stretch of this season. He is correct that it’s on his shoulders to figure this out. His seat should be feeling warm right now even if the only source of the heat is him and the expectations that he has.
At the same time, it’s not like Haase is the only guy responsible for this team’s alarming regression. I don’t doubt that Haase and his staff gave his players a sound game plan before the game. I don’t doubt that they did everything in their power to prepare their guys. This is an energetic, motivated coaching staff that wants to win. As one who covers this team, I don’t doubt any of that. This coaching staff is locked in and doing everything they can.
With that all being the case, the players do need to own this regression as well. Freshman Harrison Ingram came to The Farm as a McDonald’s All-American. He has NBA aspirations. He wants to be a big-time player. Big-time players don’t score 6 points on 2-10 shooting from the field like Ingram did last night. He needs to step up and play like the player he knows he’s capable of being. Senior Jaiden Delaire has to put up more than 7 points on 2-7 shooting from the field. As a veteran on this team, he’s gotta be more of a leader and lead out.
And then as for the rest of the team, junior Spencer Jones can’t be the only guy scoring in double figures. Someone else has to step up. If Ingram is going to disappear and Delaire is going to be quiet, somebody else has to say ok, it’s my time to shine. Nobody did that. That’s disappointing and that’s not something you can totally blame on the coaches.
The bottom line is this Stanford team as a collective group (coaches, players, and even trainers) needs to figure this out. Whatever it takes. Even if it takes late night meditative sessions on The Oval with Bill Walton, purifying themselves in the waters of The Claw, or going on a strictly CoHo only diet. They need to get back to playing the kind of basketball they know they are capable of playing and not be afraid to think outside the box for solutions.
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