SMS
RSS feeds
Reddit
NewsvineYou might think Trent Johnson would be pretty happy right about now. A win tonight against heavy underdog Arizona State, and the Cardinal are all but in the NCAA Tournament, restarting their 11-year streak after last year’s drop-off. Plus, sophomore guard Anthony Goods is probable for the Pacific-10 Tournament, though he will rest this weekend.
Enlarge
Maybe, then, Johnson should pamper himself with a trip to the spa because if he’s happy underneath, he’s certainly not showing it to the world.
“Finishing fifth, fourth, sixth in the Pac-10 is not good enough; it’s not acceptable,” he said. “We need to get back that tradition we’ve established here.”
Expectations were never low for Stanford, but on a team with four starting underclassmen, one of them injured, Stanford’s (17-10, 9-7 Pac-10) current tie for fifth in the conference sounds pretty good. The league is as tough as it has been in years, and six Pac-10 teams figure to make the Big Dance.
A victim of the league’s resurgence has been conference cupcake Arizona State. The Sun Devils’ (7-20, 1-15) lone conference win came against USC two weeks ago, but they have been playing the whole conference tough, including a 61-58 loss to Arizona in their last game. Freshmen guard Christian Polk and sophomore forward Jeff Pendergraph lead the squad with 12 points per game apiece.
“I remember Chris [Hernandez] and Matt [Haryasz] saying that of all the teams they hated to play against, ASU was the worst,” sophomore forward Lawrence Hill said. “They play hard, they have a tough style of play, and they come in with an underdog mentality.”
Still, Hill knows the Sun Devils are winless away from Tuscon, Ariz., and accordingly, he called tonight’s 7:30 p.m. tip a “must-win” for the computer rankings and national perception. A loss would severely cripple the Cardinal, especially right after being swept by Southern California and UCLA.
“We’ll leave it to [California] to give it to them,” said Hill of an Arizona State road win. “We’re not going to let it happen here. Despite how well we’d been playing before, the selection committee might look at us after that and say we’re not a tournament team anymore.”
After tonight’s undercard, the Cardinal will do battle with perennial Pac-10 archrival Arizona on Saturday. Like Stanford, the Wildcats have fallen to relative mediocrity in recent years, but Arizona (18-9, 9-7) has the talent of a top-10 team and will be dangerous come NCAAs.
Forwards Marcus Williams, a sophomore, and Chase Budinger, a freshman, lead the Wildcats with 16 points per game apiece. Both have NBA talent. Coach Lute Olson expects Williams to bolt and Budinger to stay after this season.
Arizona rounds out with seniors Ivan Radenovic, a forward, and Mustafa Shakur, a guard. Though they both average in double figures, as seniors, they have received much of the criticism for Arizona failing to play to its potential.
For Stanford, the 12:30 p.m. start will mark Senior Day for Carlton Weatherby and Chris Bobel. And though the defense-first Weatherby or the walk-on Bobel’s minutes pale in comparison to the freshmen and sophomores’, Johnson made no mistake about their contribution to the team’s mentality.
“I feel differently about this team because they care,” he said. “They genuinely care. It’s hard for me not to play everybody.”
One guy he will soon get to play will be Goods, his second-leading scorer. Goods ran on an underwater treadmill earlier this week and may well return to practice and the pregame shoot-around today.
Nonetheless, Johnson bristled at the idea of Goods contributing tonight.
“The game isn’t played underwater,” Johnson said. “If we were playing ASU underwater, it might be a different story.”
But the coach shouldn’t be speaking so soon. Goods might just go and invent underwater basketball — that’s how badly he wants to be back on the court.
“It’s frustrating having to watch from the bench,” Goods said. “I can’t remember the last time I got hurt. It makes you hungrier, and it makes you realize what a blessing it is to be here. I’m trying to turn it into a positive and come out stronger.”