The Pac-12 has released their preseason media poll for the 2022-23 men’s basketball season and Stanford has been picked 5th, receiving one first place vote. I picked Stanford to finish 4th in the media poll, so the first place vote did not come from me. Stanford is pretty comfortable in that 5th place slot with 239 points. 4th place USC received 300 points in the poll while 6th place Colorado received 207 points.
Stanford is coming off a season in which they went 16-16 overall and 8-12 in the Pac-12. With small forward Harrison Ingram returning for his sophomore year and forward Spencer Jones expected to have a breakout senior season, Stanford has high hopes for this season, hoping to get back to the NCAA tournament for the first time since 2014. Both Ingram and Jones were selected to the Preseason Pac-12 All-First Team. Stanford also added a talented grad transfer guard from Davidson in Michael Jones and returns a large chunk of their core rotation from last year while also adding a pair talented freshmen in 4-star wings in Ryan Agarwal and Jaylen Thompson.
If there’s a team that’s going to end Stanford’s NCAA tournament drought, this feels like the team that’s got a real chance to do it. They have a much older, more seasoned group than years past, they should have the guard play with Michael Jones, Isa Silva, and Michael O’Connell, and also some size down low in James Keefe and Maxime Raynaud. When you add those pieces to the names listed above, there’s really no reason to doubt Stanford’s ability to make the tournament. It’s just a matter of them going out and making it happen.
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