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Joined: Feb 2022
What a win!
Ebuka played with attitude for 38 minutes. He led, carried, and willed his team to victory. But, at the same time, everyone in the rotatation made solid, and crucial, contributions to a team victory.
In the backcourt, along with Ebuka, Benny, Jeremy and Ryan mostly made good decisions regarding shot selection, when to move the ball around the perimeter, and when to drive to the hoop, and when to dish it to one of the big guys. There were still too many late-in-the-shot-clock prayers, but even some of those (Ryan from Steph territory!) were answered. And it would have been nice to get more assists (Ebuka had 3, the others had none), but between the 4 of them, there were only 2 turnovers. They played aggressive perimeter defense, resulting in 4 steals, and a season low 6 3s (on 27 attempts) for Louisville. The Cardinals were definitely hurt by Brown's absence, but Stanford took advantage of it - unlike Cal.
Stanford got the good Chisom for 30 minutes instead of 3. Like the backcourt group, he made good decisions regarding shooting, driving, and dishing - getting 2 of the 6 assists. He still had 4 turnovers, but his 2 steals, 2 blocks, team-high 8 rebounds (and a thunderous dunk) more than made up for that. And I thought a key to the game was inserting Oskar into the starting line-up. His stat line was nothing special, but he went head-to-head with Sananda Fru, the bigger, stronger, older 4-year German Bundesliga veteran. Oskar got beat at times, but generally held his own. And at times, he looked like the grizzled vet. Aidan and AJ were effective coming off the bench for shorter stints. I thought they were 2 of the most obvious "deer-in-the-headlights" guys vs. UND. But they were aggressive at both ends yesterday. AJ was assertive under the basket. Even when he didn't score, he made the defense pay attention to him, which opened up the offense for everyone else. And I didn't mind Aidan fouling out - I think he's often too passive, but not yesterday.
Donavin is still shaking the rust off, but I'm hopeful that he can still become a key contributor.
I checked out a Louisville message board - along with lamenting Brown's injury (some seem to think he's staying out longer than necessary to protect his draft status), they were skewering coach Pat Kelsey for bringing in shooters through the transfer portal, but not enough bangers. They compared Stanford's "bullying" of Louisville's big men to that of Arkansas & Tennessee in the Cardinals' other 2 losses. Gotta love that!
Players win games. but this game reinforced to me the job that Smith & company are doing. I would have loved to have been around them and the team form the end of the UND game through the preparation for Louisville. Whatever was done, they were not going to allow for the 0-6 (or worse) tailspin that I envisioned. They have not had 2 consecutive home losses since arriving at Stanford. That will surely be tested when UNC & Duke come to Maples. But as I've said before, "In Kyle I trust".
It doesn't get any easier next week with the trip to VaTech & UVa. But maybe this stretch of 5 Quad 1 games in a row is just what we need. After the Louisville win, Stanford is now 2-0 in Quad 1 games.
