Fresh off an impressive slew of victories last weekend, the No. 20 Stanford men’s basketball team will face its first road test of the year tonight when it plays at Northwestern.

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Alex Oppenheimer

Robin Lopez #42 sophomore playing against UCSB

The Cardinal will be the first opponent of the year for the Wildcats, who went 13-18 last year and finished second to last in the Big Ten Conference. Tonight’s game will be a rematch of last year’s match-up, which Stanford won in a sloppy 58-53 game at Maples Pavilion.

Stanford comes into tonight’s game riding high — the team looked dominant last weekend, beating Harvard, Northwestern State and UC-Santa Barbara by an average of more than 30 points. The Cardinal offense was dynamite, averaging 91.7 points per game during the opening weekend Basketball Travelers Classic.

“It’s a good start for us,” coach Trent Johnson said to ESPN.com. “The thing that impressed me with this group this weekend, regardless of who we’re playing we’re playing with energy right now. We kept playing hard.”

Although the game will be played on the road, the Wildcats might not provide more of a challenge than Stanford’s previous opponents. Northwestern has been a perennial doormat when it comes to Big Ten basketball, and they showed few signs of change in a scrappy eight-point exhibition victory over Division-III University of Chicago.

The Wildcats are also a very young team, featuring only one senior. They started three freshmen in their preseason opener: forward Nikola Baran, point guard Michael “Juice” Thompson and guard/forward Mike Capocci. Rounding out the team’s starting five in the exhibition game were junior guard Sterling Williams and guard/forward Jeff Ryan.

Despite their inexperience, the freshmen may be a bright spot for the Wildcats. Capocci led the team with 18 points and nine rebounds against Chicago. Thompson also chipped in with 14 points and five assists.

“Early on, I think our veterans are going to have to lead us in scoring and how you go about stuff,” Northwestern coach Bill Carmody told ESPN.com. “But I really like our two freshmen. As far as goals and stuff, we’re still trying to figure it out, to tell you the truth.”

Other notable Wildcat players are senior transfer Jason Okrzesik and junior guard Craig Moore. Okrzesik had 15 points in the Wildcats’ exhibition victory while Moore was the second-leading scorer on last year’s team, averaging 8.1 points per game.

Northwestern will also be without the aid of one if its best players, sophomore forward Kevin Coble, who is on a leave of absence from the team while his mother undergoes cancer treatment. Coble led the Wildcats last year with 13.4 points and 5.2 rebounds per game.

On paper, Northwestern is overmatched by the Cardinal. The Wildcats have a meager frontline; Baran is the team’s tallest player, checking in at 6 feet 7 inches. Coach Bill Carmody will have a hard time countering the Stanford frontline — despite the fact that Stanford is still without star big man Brook Lopez, who will miss six more games due to academic ineligibility, 6-foot-8-inch Lawrence Hill and seven-footer Robin Lopez will give the Wildcats all they can handle and more.

The Cardinal also outmatch Northwestern on the perimeter with the shooting of junior guard Anthony Goods and the ball-handling of point guards Mitch Johnson and Drew Shiller. Sophomore wing Landry Fields may provide a boost off the bench if the team is cold from the floor.

At 3-0, the Cardinal is off to its best start since the 2003-2004 season, in which the squad was ranked No. 1 in the country and was a top seed in the NCAA tournament.

Tip-off is set for 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time in Welsh-Ryan Arena. The game will be televised on the Big Ten Network, but will be broadcast locally on KNTS 1220 AM.