03-24-2025, 09:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-26-2025, 10:07 PM by Sam Leopold.)
A home loss in the NIT is probably not the ending we were envisioning, but the goals I had for this team in the preseason were mostly met. This year, Kyle Smith found the wherewithal to bring in Oziyah Sellers, Chisom Okpara, and Jaylen Blakes through the portal and apart from that, had to play the cards that Jerod Haase dealt him. Maxime Raynaud went from a good player to a conference headliner.
Near the end of the Loyola-San Francisco game on ESPN2 last night they showed a look-in to our game to reveal Blakes missing a pair of free throws in the opening minutes. That was an early indicator that Stanford would be off, or out of sorts. Jalen Sullinger stole the show, and by and large we got out-quicked by the Golden Flashes. And yet, down by 8 points with not much more than a minute remaining, Stanford managed to contest the game down to the last tick. That's as much as we can ask for, with the mixed grill of players that we fielded this season.
This is the first stopover of a journey that should have many legs.
Near the end of the Loyola-San Francisco game on ESPN2 last night they showed a look-in to our game to reveal Blakes missing a pair of free throws in the opening minutes. That was an early indicator that Stanford would be off, or out of sorts. Jalen Sullinger stole the show, and by and large we got out-quicked by the Golden Flashes. And yet, down by 8 points with not much more than a minute remaining, Stanford managed to contest the game down to the last tick. That's as much as we can ask for, with the mixed grill of players that we fielded this season.
This is the first stopover of a journey that should have many legs.
"When you compare the sorrows of real life to the pleasures of the imaginary one, you will never want to live again, only dream forever." -- Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo (1846)