If you asked the pundits, this was supposed to be a down year for Stanford men’s basketball. A November headline in the San Jose Mercury News wondered, “Great unknown: Can the Cardinal win?”
On paper, the team looked inexperienced and appeared to lack depth at key positions. The media—wary of a Stanford squad that had lost All-American juniors Casey Jacobsen and Curtis Borchardt to the NBA—predicted a seventh-place Pac-10 finish. Head coach Mike Montgomery expected a turbulent ride. “We’ll have some tough times,” he told the San Francisco Chronicle before the season.
Then came the games.
So much for the pundits.
Stanford finished 24-9 (besting last season’s 20-10 mark), placed second in the Pac-10 and beat five nationally ranked teams: Florida, Xavier, Oregon, Cal and Arizona.
The Cardinal also kept a trio of impressive streaks alive: it finished first or second in the conference for the seventh straight year, won 20 or more games for the ninth consecutive season and won its ninth consecutive first-round NCAA tournament game. The No. 4 seed in the South region, Stanford defeated No. 13 San Diego, 77-69, before falling to fifth-seeded Connecticut, 85-74, in Spokane, Wash.
Adversity along the way made Stanford’s run even more improbable. Sophomore point guard Chris Hernandez broke his foot during the preseason; after rejoining the lineup in mid-December, he broke it again and sat out the year. Football standout Teyo Johnson, ’04, decided to enter the NFL draft, leaving the Cardinal thin at power forward. And redshirt junior Justin Davis—who was leading the Pac-10 in rebounding until he sprained his knee against Cal—missed five games in January.
So how did Stanford beat top-ranked Arizona in Tucson, its first-ever road win over a No. 1 team? How did the squad compile a 14-4 record in games decided by 10 points or less?
Three words: flexibility, chemistry and hair.
Julius Barnes, the team’s lone senior, demonstrated his flexibility by ably replacing Hernandez at point guard. Better suited to the shooting-guard position, Barnes developed into a floor leader who could run the offense and still light up the scoreboard. He led the team in scoring with 16 points per game, dished out an average of almost four assists and showed a knack for getting hot—he poured in 33 and 29 points in back-to-back games in early February.
Montgomery also proved flexible. An adamant proponent of solid man-to-man defense, the coach adopted a 1-1-3 zone defense early in the year. Several teams, including Xavier and Florida, proved unprepared for Stanford’s new look. Montgomery was named Pac-10 co-coach of the year alongside Arizona’s Lute Olson.
In many games, Stanford became a team better than the sum of its parts, a sure sign of great chemistry. Coaches noted how much they enjoyed working with players without egos and agendas. “If you believe in the basketball gods, [we had] good karma,” says assistant coach Eric Reveno, ’88, MBA ’95. “It was a special group of guys that, quite frankly, overachieved. We won 24 games—we could have easily won 17 instead.”
And the hair? That would belong to sophomore Josh Childress, who elevated his game to match his elevated hairdo. (And don’t forget redshirt junior Joe Kirchofer, whose dense curls earned him a spot alongside Childress and his 3 1/2-inch ’do on ESPN.com’s third annual NCAA Tournament All-Hair Team.) Childress developed into a smooth slasher around the basket who could also hit the deep three-pointer, averaging 14.1 points per contest. And he grabbed more than eight rebounds per game.
Next year, Childress, Davis, Hernandez, center Rob Little, ’05, and shooting guard Matt Lottich, ’04, will all return to the starting lineup, complemented by a battle-tested bench and four eager freshmen. Looks like the ingredients for a top-20 team.
But let’s see what the pundits say.
