This season was supposed to be a transition for the Stanford men’s basketball team. Chris Hernandez, Matt Haryasz and Dan Grunfeld — all gone. Lawrence Hill, Anthony Goods, Mitch Johnson and the Lopez twins — all underclassmen.

But the Cardinal, largely through the efforts of sophomore Hill and his young gun teammates, have still found a way to stay competitive in the toughest conference in the country.

“We don’t listen to all the hype,” Hill said. “We’re staying humble and making sure that we make this season what we can make it, game by game.”

It is impossible to give one player credit for the Cardinal’s 12-5 start. Sophomore guard Anthony Goods has performed beyond expectations, freshmen Brook and Robin Lopez have dominated under the basket and senior forward Fred Washington has elevated his game to a new level. But no single player has been the face of Stanford’s surprising success more than Hill.

Not only is Hill first on the team in scoring with 15.3 points per game and second in rebounding with 6.3 boards per contest, but he has also played a major role in some of the Cardinal’s closest and most memorable victories.

In a 69-67 victory over Fresno State on Dec. 19, Hill hit a pair of free throws with 14 seconds left to give the Cardinal the win. A little more than two weeks later, Hill’s floater in the lane against Virginia with nine-tenths of a second left in the game propelled Stanford to a 76-75 victory. And most recently, the sophomore forward had big plays in the closing seconds of dramatic wins over Washington and Washington State.

The list of Hill’s late game successes is extensive. But the soft-spoken native of Glendale, Ariz. claims that his final-second opportunities just prove there is work to be done.

“It says a lot that we’re able to do something positive late in games,” Hill said. “Earlier in the season, we may not have had the confidence, but now we don’t doubt ourselves. But we also know that the reason the games were close was because of our earlier breakdowns.”

Defensive lapses have plagued Hill throughout his career at Stanford. A natural small forward, he was forced to play exclusively power forward last season and started the 2006-07 campaign playing up due to Brook Lopez’s injury. As a result, the 6-foot-8, 205 pound Hill had to learn to body up bigger opponents.

“His problem to this point is that he still needs to embrace contact and learn to use his length on smaller, quicker players,” head coach Trent Johnson said of Hill’s defensive struggles. “He has a tendency to get caught on screens. He needs to learn to embrace that contact and run through screens and use his size. Now, it is also an adjustment for him to defend on the perimeter and small guys off the dribble.”

But Hill is taking pride in his defensive progress. He said he hopes his defensive effort will soon overshadow his offensive heroics.

“No matter what, I still want to be a good team player that kept us into the game until the end,” Hill said. “I want to help us on every defensive possession. I would be much happier to take a charge to win a game or box a body or steal a ball. In a game a team hits around 30 shots and most people see that last one as the most important. On our team we would see the defensive breakdowns that made the game so close.”

Hill admits that his game is still a work in progress. In his freshman campaign he played in all 30 games but averaged just over 15 minutes a game. Now as a full time starter, he is getting plenty of experience to help improve his overall skills.

“The biggest thing for my improvement has been the experience,” Hill said. “I’ve been playing a lot this year, on top of the time I got last season. It would be really bad if I didn’t improve myself since last year.”

“I try to be a lot like Fred,” Hill continued. “I want to do everything, whether it is outside shooting, midrange, going to the basket, guarding a big man or guarding a guard. I want to do it all. As long as I can do a couple of those a game, I can help out. If I can do them all, that would be great.”

That do-it-all, always-get-better mindset has certainly contributed to Hill’s overall success this season. He has taken the team’s success, as well as his own personal accomplishments, in stride while still realizing that there is plenty left to achieve.

“We’re happy about how the season has gone so far, but we understand that we’ve had some bad losses,” Hill said. “We know have a lot more work to do.”