Minutes after the Cardinal men lost to the Texas Longhorns, 82-62, in the NCAA Sweet Sixteen, reporters were pummeling head coach Trent Johnson about the Lopez twins. Would they be back next season?
But Coach J was having none of it at the postgame press conference March 28 at Houston’s Reliant Stadium. “My concern and my thoughts are that this is a team with four seniors that played exceptionally well. Taj Finger, Kenny Brown, Fred Washington, Peter Prowitt—those are where my thoughts are right now.”
Ranked No. 23 nationally in a preseason Associated Press poll, the Cardinal (28-8) had an unexpectedly good run. As Finger, a forward, told reporters, “Second in the Pac-10, making it to the Sweet 16—I definitely think we left our mark.”
The squad’s most impressive numbers belonged to the 7-foot Lopez twins. Power forward Brook, the close-cropped, crowd-energizing twin, averaged 19.3 points, 8.2 rebounds and 2.1 blocks, while tousle-haired, introspective center Robin averaged 12.5 points in the final 13 games. Brook had long been considered a top-five pick in the 2008 NBA draft, and Robin’s offensive improvement may make him a first-round draft pick as well. Three days after losing in the Sweet Sixteen, the 20-year-old sophomores announced they were hiring an agent and would be turning pro. Mom Deborah Ledford, ’71, who swam for Stanford and was ranked second in the world in the 400 individual medley, affirmed, “They definitely do want to finish their degrees.”
Although the Cardinal lost to Texas, Johnson said he was impressed by “how hard they worked to improve” this season. In the first round of the South Regional tournament, No. 3-seeded Stanford romped over 14th-seeded Ivy League champ Cornell, 77-53. Two days later the Cardinal squeezed past No. 6 seed Marquette in the second round, 82-81 in overtime, despite Johnson’s first-ever ejection, after two technical fouls. Without their coach, forward Washington said later, “It was not like, ‘Oh, crap, Coach J got kicked out.’ It was like, ‘We need to play the best basketball we’ve played all year to win this.’”
At the end of the 28-8 season, Johnson, the Pac-10 Coach of the Year, made a surprise move of his own, when he was introduced as the new head coach at Louisiana State on April 10. Goodbye Tree, hello Tigers.
