[AlbanyCardinal]

That narrative -- that Stanford improved without Davis, Wills, and Ziaire -- doesn't hold up completely for me. In that it opened the door for Delaire to rise and O'Connell to emerge certainly helped the team, but both (or multiple) iterations of this squad had its highs and its lows, its advantages and its flaws. What I see uniting these lineups is a failure to really get stronger as the season wore on. Both had a winning streak, beating some tough opponents ('Bama, Arizona, OSU, UCLA), and both tanked. And when they mixed together, they tanked even worse due to some circumstances that I still don't fully know about. But to me, the pattern is the same as every year, no matter the lineup, and that's most concerning.

[AlbanyCardinal]

That narrative -- that Stanford improved without Davis, Wills, and Ziaire -- doesn't hold up completely for me. In that it opened the door for Delaire to rise and O'Connell to emerge certainly helped the team, but both (or multiple) iterations of this squad had its highs and its lows, its advantages and its flaws. What I see uniting these lineups is a failure to really get stronger as the season wore on. Both had a winning streak, beating some tough opponents ('Bama, Arizona, OSU, UCLA), and both tanked. And when they mixed together, they tanked even worse due to some circumstances that I still don't fully know about. But to me, the pattern is the same as every year, no matter the lineup, and that's most concerning.