One Hill stood tallest Sunday in the Mile-High state.

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Junior forward Lawrence Hill had one of his best outings of the season in the Cardinal’s eighth win in nine preseason games. Against Colorado, Hill scored 15 points and pulled down 10 rebounds for his first double-double of the year. #gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8297
Alex Oppenheimer

Junior forward Lawrence Hill had one of his best outings of the season in the Cardinal’s eighth win in nine preseason games. Against Colorado, Hill scored 15 points and pulled down 10 rebounds for his first double-double of the year.

Junior forward Lawrence Hill recorded his second career double-double (15 points, 10 rebounds), and first since November 2006, while junior guard Anthony Goods added 15 points on five-of-six three-point shooting to help defeat Colorado last Sunday in Boulder. Stanford’s height in the middle and a hot second-half start helped the Cardinal finish its best fall quarter of the Trent Johnson era at 8-1 with a 67-43 dismantling of the Buffaloes.

The Cardinal blew open its 25-22 halftime lead with a 16-4 run in the first five minutes of the second half. Goods’ three-pointer seven seconds into the half started the streak, senior forward Taj Finger’s jumper at the 13:34 mark capped it and every Stanford starter scored in between, with junior point guard Mitch Johnson adding a free throw, sophomore center Robin Lopez and Hill a jumper, Goods another three, and senior forward Fred Washington an and-one layup.

Colorado made just one of eight shots during that fateful stretch, and so Stanford led 41-26 with 13 minutes left. The Buffaloes (5-3) never led after 2-0, and never were able to cut that 15-point margin to single figures, despite 16 points from guard Marcus Hall and 10 from guard Cory Higgins.

The Buffaloes finished just 7-20 overall and 3-13 in the Big 12 last year largely due to their inferior size, and it showed yesterday. Stanford nearly doubled up Colorado on the glass (37 rebounds to 19) and the Buffaloes’ frontcourt managed only four points to Stanford’s 35. The Cardinal’s defense was therefore free to vacate the paint against Colorado’s four-guard starting lineup and pressure the perimeter. It worked, as Colorado shot just 35 percent (15-of-43) to Stanford’s 48 percent (24-of-50) en route to the fewest points Stanford’s allowed since an 82-39 win over Denver last November.

The game also saw the Cardinal bench shorten in a way that might reveal interesting insight into the season to come.

Nearly a dozen players had factored prominently in early-season blowouts over the weaklings of the college basketball landscape. But yesterday, Trent Johnson gave only six players more than 11 minutes of playing time — the starters Washington, Hill, Goods, Mitch Johnson and Robin Lopez, as well as sixth man Finger, in relief of the whistle-prone Lopez, who finished with four fouls. In fact, the only other player to attempt more than one shot was junior guard Kenny Brown (3-of-6), arguably the team’s best pure shooter.

By tightening the bench and making sure his best players shot the ball, Johnson gave credence to his words last Tuesday that the honeymoon was now over. He was trying to get his team to perform as well as it possibly could with considerable challenges upcoming — a two-week break for finals, the reintegration of a soon-to-be academically eligible Brook Lopez into the starting lineup, a visit from a tough Santa Clara team Dec. 19 and the tipoff of a vicious Pac-10 season just weeks thereafter.

Making the challenge that much more poignant is that how well the Cardinal will respond is still largely a mystery. That’s because Stanford has played an incredibly weak schedule to-date, ranked just 226th of the nation’s 341 Division I-A teams before yesterday’s action. On the other hand, the Cardinal’s RPI, a key metric in NCAA selection and seeding, was a decent 80th before yesterday’s win, and should only climb once the Pac-10 slate brings up the strength of schedule.

Just as importantly, the team had its first strong showing on the road in three tries yesterday, finished its first strong fall in four tries under Johnson, and Hill, last season’s All-Pac-10 forward and team MVP, declared once and for all his early-season slump is a thing of the past, with his first double-double since an 84-72 win over UC Davis last Nov. 28.

As it goes into its two-week hiatus, Stanford is out-rebounding opponents by 13 per game and holding them to just 57 points per contest on 38.3 percent shooting — all marks are near the top of the Pac-10 and significantly better than the team’s numbers last year.