Stanford Finds Its March Offense: A Seven Player Juggernaught?

 

Warren Grimes

Last year, on Sunday, December 14, Stanford defeated California in its first conference game of the season.  Stanford was 9-2 overall.  Preseason predictions had Stanford finishing the season in 6^th place in the ACC.  That seemed an overly cautious prediction given Stanford’s recruiting class that included three high school All Americans.  An NCAA tournament birth seemed assured.  The freshmen, two of whom had started all 11 games, seemed destined to get even better.

If someone had told me then that Stanford would finish the conference season in 13^th place, I would have been quite disappointed – and a bit incredulous. 

There’s another side to this story.  If, on December 14, I had settled down for a long Winter’s nap – I mean a Rip Van Winkle-type nap that lasted for weeks – only to wake up at Maples in time to see the March 1 game against Clemson, I would have slept through all of the Sturm and Drang of the mid-conference season.  Watching the Clemson game, I would have thought, just as predicted, that Stanford had become an elite, top-ten team.   Stanford methodically dismembered Clemson, winning by 35 points and racking up 87 points against a team that had held opponents to an average of 58 points per game.    

If someone next to me told me that in the previous game, Stanford had bested SMU by 30 points, I would have nodded and said to myself, “Yup, just as expected.”  If the same person happened to mention that freshman Lara Somfai had four times been selected for conference freshman of the week, my thought would have been “yes, that’s not surprising.”

Of course, once I had fully awakened from my Rip Van Winkle-sleep, I would have realized that the journey to the last two games was vastly different, and much more of a Cinderella story.  Stanford, after losing Nunu Agara and Talana Lepolo to injury, had lost 8 of the last 9 conference games before winning the last three.  Stanford had finished with an overall losing record in the ACC (8-10).

Stanford found its offensive rhythm in the final conference games thanks to a seven-player rotation that included its three top scoring juniors (Agara, Chloe Clardy, and Courtney Ogden) and the team’s next three highest scorers (freshmen All-Americans Lara Somfai, Hailey Swain, and Alexandra Eschmeyer) plus sophomore Shay Ijiwoye.   Crisp interior passing and lots of movement led to many uncontested layups.  That’s Stanford’s March basketball pedigree.  A notable change for the last three games was Ijiwoye’s insertion into the starting lineup as the point guard.  Against Clemson, Ijiwoye had only 4 points, but garnished that with 4 boards, 5 assists and a steal against only 2 turnovers.  Another positive was Hailey Swain's 20 points, the most a freshman had scored this season.

All of this looks good for the ACC tournament.  To be a true Cinderella story, Stanford has to get to the Big Dance.  You can’t lose your glass slipper unless you go to the dance.