While most Stanford students can look forward to a nice break following their finals week, the men’s basketball team isn’t so lucky. For them, the new year starts now.

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Alex Oppenheimer

Sophomore center Robin Lopez scored four points and nabbed six rebounds in Stanford’s win over Colorado. He is averaging over 11 points and six rebounds on the season.

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Andrew Davis

The Cardinal eagerly awaits the return of sophomore big man Brook Lopez, who has yet to play this season because of academic issues. As a freshman, Lopez averaged 12.6 points, 1.73 blocks and six rebounds per game.

With nearly two weeks until their Dec. 19 matchup against Santa Clara, head coach Trent Johnson is taking the team back to training camp. The Cardinal has an exhibition game against The College of Idaho on Dec. 16 to get sharp, but will be running hard in practice until then.

After the squad’s mid-month tune-up, there will be no margin for error, as the schedule only gets tougher from here on out. The Pacific-10 Conference is widely projected to provide the toughest competition in the nation this season, and Stanford begins its conference schedule at home against seventh-ranked UCLA and No. 24 USC the first week of January.

“It’s pretty much back to preseason,” senior forward Taj Finger said. “We’ll be breaking down the defense, working on all the little things now on offense, really just perfecting everything.”

The Cardinal has not been perfect thus far, but its record is close. The 8-1 start is the best in Trent Johnson’s four years as head coach. And while Stanford’s schedule to-date has been considered by some to be unnecessarily weak, its RPI was up to a respectable 60 as of Tuesday morning. Early season wins over UC-Santa Barbara and Harvard look more legitimate now that the Gauchos are 7-1 and atop the Big West Conference, while the Crimson upset Michigan last week.

Johnson, for his part, is not one to be satisfied. He is pushing the team to get comfortable running the offense inside and not just settling for the jump shot. Stanford made only 12 of its 31 three-point attempts against Siena, eventually losing to the Saints on the road 79-67 in the only blemish on this young season so far.

“We’ve got to work on not settling for threes,” Finger said, “just working the ball inside, working the offense.”

Overall, the Cardinal is shooting the ball well: .505 from the field and .419 from three-point range, marks that stack up third and second, respectively, in the Pac-10. The name of the game on offense so far this season has been balance. Four different players have led the team in scoring over the first nine games, with Anthony Goods leading the team overall with 13 per night.

The most encouraging development on the offensive end has been the emergence of Robin Lopez. The seven-foot sophomore, who spent the summer working on his footwork in the post, has boosted his scoring average to 11.4 per game, up from 7.5 last season. His play has allowed Stanford to continue to run the offense in the post while they await the return of his brother, Brook, due back from academic ineligibility by the end of the month.

That the team has gotten off to such a hot start without their best all-around player in Brook Lopez makes it impressive, despite concerns over the strength of schedule. And unlike last season, when the team had to work Lopez back into the lineup slowly after he missed the first five games recovering from back surgery, the sophomore star has been practicing with the team and should make a seamless transition back. He’ll reportedly come off the bench to start, but it will be interesting to see if Johnson can keep his second seven-footer off the court for too long.

“It’ll be nice to have Brook back,” senior forward Fred Washington said. “It will be nice to have a bigger body on the boards, and he’s a good low post scorer.”

On the defensive end, Johnson had told his team to crack down on dribble penetration. There’s an element of pride involved, Finger said, in one-on-one defense.

“You’ve got to take it upon yourself and not let your man beat you,” he said.

For Washington, arguably the team’s best one-on-one defender, there is still plenty to work on. His lock-down defense on Colorado guard Richard Roby played a critical role in Stanford’s 67-43 win over the Buffaloes on Sunday, but Washington said the team’s defense still has a ways to go.

“We still have a couple of letdowns a game that we need to work on,” he said.

According to the numbers, however, the team is doing pretty well. The Cardinal leads the Pac-10 rebounding margin and defensive field goal percentage, outrebounding its opponents by more than 13, on average, and holding them to 38.3 percent shooting from the field. In scoring differential — one of the most telling statistics of how well a team is playing — Stanford again is tops in the league with a 21.4 margin. Conference powerhouses UCLA and Washington State, however, are close behind at 19.9 and 19.7, respectively.

“Everyone’s been playing well, buying into defensive concept,” Finger said. “Hopefully we can keep it up.”