Nine, 20, 18, 12, 16, 11, one.

Enlarge
#gallery http://daily.stanford.edu/image/full/8494
John Laxson

Brook Lopez’s impending decision whether or not to turn pro after the season puts added pressure on the Cardinal to win now. Lopez has averaged 23 points in his last six games.

No, those aren’t your fortune cookie’s lucky lotto numbers, and sorry ladies, that’s not my phone number either. Those are just the seven most important figures to Stanford basketball as it prepares to host Oregon at 7 p.m. tonight.

No. 9 is Stanford’s current rank, the highest it has been since Mike Montgomery led the 2003-04 squad to a 26-0 start. The reason Stanford has moved into the Beverly Hills of the college basketball landscape is because it has won five straight in the Pac-10, with its latest victory the most impressive to date — a 67-65 overtime thriller at then-No. 5 Washington State. But frankly, coach Trent Johnson is just afraid his team is going to lose its head amidst the hype.

“What you have to understand is that there’s probably two guys in that locker room that have experienced something like [a top-10 ranking], and that’s me and [assistant coach] Doug Oliver,” he said. “But what I told them is nothing changes. How did we get there? You have to work and think about getting better. They have to trust through facts and experience [that] this is how it works, not what their girlfriend or their mom says.”

20 wins is evidence of a solid season in major college basketball, a mark Stanford also has not hit since that 2003-04 season. The Cardinal (18-3, 7-2 Pac-10) will reach that coveted 20-win mark with a sweep this weekend. Already, Stanford has matched the 18 wins it posted last season and in 2004-05, its bests under Johnson. If you put Oregon State (6-15, 0-9 Pac-10) in the gimme column, the matchup with the Ducks will determine whether Lawrence Hill will have to wait until next weekend against Arizona and Arizona State to achieve his lofty goal.

“I’ve always wanted a 20-win season,” Hill said. “I always wanted to be in the top-10 too, but it’s being able to win games that we want to win and should win. We still know two of our three losses were games we should have won if we play at the level we’re supposed to.”

One of the losses Hill was referring to was a November defensive breakdown at Siena, but the other was a Jan. 13 71-66 loss at Oregon. The Ducks closed the game on an 8-0 run, with the smallest man making the biggest plays down the stretch. Guard Tajuan Porter, all 5’6” of him, scored four of those final points and 15 in the game, using his quickness to get past junior point guard Mitch Johnson.

As Darren Collison, Nic Wise and now Kyle Weaver can attest, Stanford’s starting guards are too slow to stop the quicker backcourts in this league from penetrating. Porter might get a heavy dose of senior forward Fred Washington, Stanford’s best on-ball defender; he might get a zone defense; Trent Johnson might take his chances with Mitch Johnson; or likelier yet, we’ll see a combination of all of the above. But whatever the set-up, one question will go a long way in crowning tonight’s victor: can Stanford stop Oregon’s No. 12?

“Porter for Oregon, no one’s been able to take away his lanes, take away his shots,” said coach Johnson, who can’t afford to forget either about sharpshooting guard Bryce Taylor or slashing forward Malik Hairston.

“We’ve got to do a good job of keeping him to the sides of the floor, running different guys at him and trying to wear him down. Once a guy like that gets by you, get physical in the lane. Once that doesn’t work, go to a zone, but then they’re quick to the ball in a zone because there are free running lanes, so long shots, long rebounds really favor a team like an Oregon.”

Sixteen is for the Sweet 16. Though no one on the team will publicly look that far ahead, winning two games in the NCAA Tournament, which Stanford has not done since 2000-01, has to be in the “must” category given the status of the man in the middle.

Likely to be a lottery pick in the upcoming NBA Draft, sophomore center Brook Lopez is averaging 23 points over his last six games; he tallied 26 points on 10-of-16 shooting at Oregon. Given that Lopez scored a career-high 31 points against Washington’s Jon Brockman, and that, try as Maarty Leunen might, Oregon still lacks a true center, Stanford’s No. 11 has to be licking his chops for tonight.

His team, meanwhile, has to be calm and focused for the next two months, because the odds of reaching the Sweet 16 and beyond are better now than they will be for the foreseeable future. The team has the second half of that equation down, but Hill and guards Landry Fields and Anthony Goods — who practiced this week after rolling an ankle at Washington State and is likely to start tonight — have all pressed too hard at times.

“I don’t want to fail,” Hill said. “This is the best position we’ve been in as a team since I’ve been here, and it only gets harder with more and more success.”

Finally, the ever elusive number one. It could be for UCLA, the one team in this conference legitimately better than the Cardinal, as Hill implied earlier. Stanford is also one game behind those Bruins (20-2, 8-1) in the Pac-10 standings, and knows it needs to stay hot to keep up.

“Our goal is to win the Pac-10,” Hill said. “We really need to win all our games to have a shot because UCLA is going to handle their business.”

But, in the first season in years that justifies dreaming of even greater heights, perhaps one is a reminder of the ultimate prize.

“I don’t want to be No. 9 in country, I want to be higher,” Hill said. “No. 1 in the country is the team that wins whole thing.”