SEATTLE – On Jan. 8, Stanford beat Arizona State 63-62, despite ASU having four shots at the basket in the waning seconds.
On Feb. 7, the Cardinal beat Arizona 80-77 when Nick Robinson hit a running, 35-footer at the buzzer.
On Thursday night, Stanford fought back from a five-point deficit in the last 20 seconds and beat Washington State 63-61 on a desperation 3-pointer by Matt Lottich at the buzzer.
Twenty-six straight times, Stanford has found a way to remain unbeaten, some more exciting than others. It is, by any account, a team largely of No. 1 NBA draft picks. No Cardinal is ranked in the top 15 of the Pacific-10 Conference in scoring. Ask five Pac-10 coaches who Stanford’s best player is, and you might well get five different answers.
Simply put, Stanford is a team in every sense of the word, from the starters to the last guy on the bench. It’s a group that’s unselfish, one that cares not a whit who gets credit, one whose only thought is to win.
“We don’t separate into the starters and the bench players,” Stanford forward Josh Childress said. “Everybody is part of the team. We look at it more as everybody contributing, rather than the bench contributing.”
Indeed, it is the bench that might separate Stanford from the rest of the Pac-10, and maybe the rest of the country.
Ten players average at least 10 minutes a game. All accept assigned roles, whether it be scoring, defense, rebounding or screen-setting. It’s that way throughout the team, from Stanford’s outstanding point guard, Chris Hernandez, to reserve forward Fred Washington, a little-used freshman who scored 11 points on 4-for-5 shooting in a victory against Oregon State.
“They have very, very good starters, but when you bring in guys like that who know their roles, who accept their roles, they just make the team better,” USC coach Henry Bibby said. “The starters can take it a certain distance, and then the subs take it the rest of the way.”
Washington State coach Dick Bennett says Stanford compares well with the 2000 Michigan State team that won the national title.
“They could play any way you wanted to play them,” said Bennett, whose Wisconsin teams played MSU then. “They could play full-court. If they wanted to play half-court, they were good at that. They had great senior leadership. That’s what I see in this Stanford bunch. They’re very complete. There’s always someone who can take up the slack for whatever is missing. They compare very favorably to the best teams I can remember.”
This might not be Montgomery’s most physical team, although the 2003-04 Cardinal is plenty physical. What this group has, however, perhaps more than any team Montgomery has had in his 17-plus seasons as head coach, is a true feeling of togetherness, which comes from its unselfishness.
“They’re fun to be around,” Montgomery said. “There aren’t any sour attitudes, so it makes it really fun that way. They like each other. They don’t mind practicing, so you don’t have to worry so much about getting them going. It’s an exceptional group that way, because they have a pretty good outlook on things. They come to play every day.”
And every day, they have to answer the same questions about whether they can remain undefeated, through the regular season, through the Pac-10 Tournament and through the NCAA Tournament.
“It’s there,” Montgomery said. “There’s nothing we can do about it. It’s been there for a long time. I think the kids have learned to deal with it. They know that it’s a possibility. There’s no point hiding from it, but it’s not something that’s a focal point. The focal point is trying to win the next game.”
That would be Washington, No. 27 and last in the regular season, a hot team playing in a sold-out Hec Edmundson Pavilion for a possible NCAA Tournament berth.
And, for the above reasons – plus being a team the exact opposite of Stanford’s experience with Washington’s State’s deliberate style – the Huskies could be Stanford’s biggest test yet.
“The first part of the game against Washington, we’ll be in for a little shock,” Montgomery said. “It’s their last game. There’s lots of incentive for them. We just have to adjust to the level of speed and quickness with which they’ll come after us.”
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