The last time the Cardinal traveled north to play the Oregon at MacArthur court, they brought along point guard Chris Hernandez — one of the most clutch players in the team’s recent history. Hernandez’s presence was especially comforting because Stanford’s last three games in the Pit have come down to the final shot, and Hernandez had experience playing big games there, including a memorable 22-point second-half performance that preserved the Cardinal’s unbeaten streak during the 2003-2004 season.

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Sammy Abusrur

Sophomore forward Lawrence Hill collected 15 points in the Cardinal’s nail-biting win over the No. 23 Cougars. Tonight, he and his teammates will have to focus on defense if they have any hope of stopping a quick Oregon offense.

Not surprisingly, the former point guard stepped up when the team needed him most, scoring Stanford’s final eight points and draining a three from the top of the key with 11.3 seconds left to give his team a 57-56 victory. The performance came only four days after he had converted three free throws with two-tenths of a second left to tie Washington at Maples Pavilion, and a couple of weeks before he hit two game-winning free throws against Southern California.

The Cardinal will travel to the Pit without Hernandez for the first time in four years, but it seems that the team would still be in pretty good shape if this game comes down to the final minutes. Stanford has eked out victories on the last possession in each of its last three games, relying on various means — a Lawrence Hill floater, a defensive stop and an Anthony Goods three — to seal the win.

“When you have an open shot late in a game, you just have to take it,” senior guard Fred Washington said. “There’s so much else going on, you’re not even thinking about those kinds of shots. Over time, you learn not to panic.”

Goods said that it’s a matter of confidence, something that he seems to have gained last weekend, when his last-second theatrics helped him earn the Pacific-10 Conference Player of the Week award. He looked a lot like Hernandez, hitting what proved to be the game-winning free throws with 27 seconds left against Washington on Thursday before burying Washington State with a three-pointer in the last seconds of overtime. He didn’t hesitate when the ball ended up in his hands, despite the fact that he had missed a contested, off-balance jumper that could have won the game at the end of regulation.

Fittingly enough, Goods took his first step toward taking over Hernandez’s role in an away game at Washington State last season, when he tipped in Hernandez’s missed jumper to beat the buzzer and the Cougars.

Johnson tries to take the pressure off players who are fairly new to late-game situations by stressing approach, not results. Goods and Hill are both sophomores and in their first year as starters. And Washington is seeing consistent minutes for the first time in his career.

“The [plays prior to the last possession] are just as important, and I don’t want them to lose sight of that,” Johnson said, pointing out that Goods wouldn’t have been in a position to deliver late-game heroics if Stanford hadn’t suffered major defensive breakdowns.

“I don’t put a lot of pressure on them. We run through late-game situations in practice, and I don’t believe in putting kids in those kinds of situations if they haven’t already been through it in practice. It’s no big deal, as long as they shoot with confidence,” he added.

Washington agreed.

“I don’t like close games,” he said. “I wish we could win by seven or eight. In the last few games, it seems like as soon as we go up, the other team gets hot.”

Johnson did acknowledge, however, that there are some benefits to those heart-pounding wins.

“We don’t notice how fatigued we are when we win,” he said.

The Cardinal will face a club that has had its own share of success in close games recently. Four of the Ducks’ last five contests have been decided by three points or fewer, and Oregon has come out on top in three of those four.

And leading scorer Aaron Brooks will be looking to make up for two missed opportunities to beat the Cardinal in the closing seconds last season — dribbling the ball off his leg and out of bounds on his team’s last possession at Maples, and missing a potential game-winner in Eugene after Hernandez’s basket.

The Pit, a none-too-welcoming arena for Oregon’s opponents, will provide a good test for the young Cardinal players’ mettle.

“Their fans get rowdy,” Hill said. “That was the first place I’ve played where they’re yelling things at you that are personal.”

“It’s deafening,” Washington added. “You can’t hear anything.” Last year, Hernandez was greeted by a fan holding up a blown-up photo of him posing with friends that the fan had procured from Facebook. Goods, Hill and company should expect more of the same.