Stanford basketball will look to get back to its opening-weekend dominance when Sacramento State visits Maples Pavilion tonight at 7 p.m.

Enlarge
#gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8233
Alex Oppenheimer

Junior Lawrence Hill is averaging over 10 points per game this season, one of three Stanford players in double digits. The Cardinal hosts a struggling Sacramento State team tonight whose only win is over NCCAA Simpson.

The Cardinal (6-1) started off the season well, sweeping the Basketball Travelers Classic convincingly, beating Harvard, Northwestern State and UC-Santa Barbara by an average of 34 points. The team climbed to No. 20 nationally and gave its fans reason to think a squad that returned every scholarship player from last year’s NCAA team was ready to take the next step.

But the next 16 days were not as kind to Stanford. Ugly 11-point wins against undermanned Northwestern and Yale sandwiched the true heartbreaker: a 79-67 loss at Siena. Though Siena has a sub-200 RPI (which will cause the NCAA committee to judge the loss harshly at the end of the season), the Saints are a perennial postseason contender with solid fundamentals, and a 10 a.m. PST tip in Albany, N.Y., some 3,000 miles away from the Farm was brutal. So the concern isn’t as much that Stanford lost, but how it happened: the team looked lethargic and played complacently, settling for 31 three-point attempts on offense and drawing only three free throw attempts.

Still, Stanford rebounded with a 73-53 win over Colorado State on Saturday, when sophomore center Robin Lopez had the most dominant game of his Cardinal career. He looks more comfortable this year than during a freshman season that saw foul trouble too often outshine his suffocating post defense — he even drained his only three-point try of the season on Saturday.

Junior Lawrence Hill, a first team All-Pac-10 forward last year, has also come on strong after a slow start: he now averages 10 points per game on 52 percent shooting, behind only Robin Lopez (12 points, seven rebounds) and junior guard Anthony Goods (13 points). Sophomore wing Landry Fields (nine points, 40 percent from beyond the arc) is developing into a complementary perimeter threat to Goods, though he will need to continue to improve defensively.

Coach Trent Johnson’s first three Stanford teams all kicked off their seasons sluggishly, so he must be feeling good about the 6-1 mark. It’s his best start on the Farm, and sophomore Brook Lopez, the team’s likely NBA lottery pick, is still watching from the sidelines due to academic ineligibility.

Sacramento State, meanwhile, did down Simpson University beautifully, 104-71, two weeks ago. Of course, Redding, Calif.-based Simpson University is in the NCCAA — the National Christian Collegiate Athletic Association. Against Division I-A foes, however, the Hornets (1-5) have had less success. They’re winless, with no more than 65 points in any contest.

Such is life for the Big Sky team that finished 10-19 last year, which also has visits to Oregon and Marquette on its preseason schedule. They get a guaranteed paycheck, the big school gets a near-guaranteed win. If Sacramento State is to make a run though, guards Loren Leath (19 points per game) and Vinnie McGhee, Jr. (11 points, six assists) will have to play the games of their lives.

The tallest Hornet tops out at 6-foot-8, so Stanford should be able to take advantage of that by pounding it inside, waiting for the double team and then kicking it out for open threes. In any case, the Cardinal should have little trouble against the Hornets tonight.