ANAHEIM, CALIF. -- Defense and rebounding.

All year, Stanford men’s basketball has built an identity around those two fundamental skills.

It showed Thursday, as three-seed Stanford (27-7) claimed its first NCAA Tournament win in four years, downing 14-seed Cornell 77-53. Stanford outrebounded the ironically-named Big Red 47-25 and held Cornell to just 16 percent shooting (5-of-32) in the first half and 31 percent overall (18-of-59).

“It was very important for us to come out and defend,” said senior guard Kenny Brown. “That's what Stanford tries to identify with. We know in order to go far in this tournament, to go anywhere in this tournament, we have to play defense first.”

Everyone in a Stanford uniform played – none more than 24 minutes – and all but three of those 12 players scored. Brown led the way with 18 points (6-of-8 overall, 4-of-5 deep), sophomore center Robin Lopez added 14 (7-of-9) and Taj Finger chipped in 10 (5-of-8).

Stanford led 6-0 after three minutes, 24-12 with 7:24 left in the first half and 38-17 at halftime. The margin grew as large as 66-30 in the second, before Stanford went deep into its bench and Cornell’s starters salvaged whatever moral victory they could.

“His kids play this style, it's almost a brand, it's Stanford basketball,” Cornell coach Steve Donahue said of Trent Johnson’s team. “They get physical with you. I respect that they played us as hard as they did.”

Stanford honed in on Cornell’s two sharpest shooters, holding forward Ryan Wittman and guard Louis Dale to a combined 1-of-15 first-half shooting, though both entered the game with over 40 percent accuracy deep. The Cardinal also outmuscled Cornell 13-10 on the offensive glass, an abrupt and welcome reversal from the 18-5 advantage UCLA held in the Pac-10 Tournament Championship.

“Sometimes, because we have size and we're not rebounding well, it's because we're getting outquicked to the ball and other teams may have better athletes,” Trent Johnson explained. “For the most part today, we were very aggressive ,but we got a quickness advantage to the ball at times.”

Earlier Thursday, No. 6 seed Marquette handled No. 11 seed Kentucky 74-66, with four Golden Eagle scorers reaching double digits. Guards Jerel McNeal (20 points Thursday), Dominic James (15 points) and Wes Matthews (13 points) especially worry Coach Johnson as he looks ahead to Saturday’s noon tip.

“Everything's at the rim,” he said of Marquette’s high-paced, pressure-oriented style of play. “We're going to have to limit transition baskets. They want to play fast.

“Dominic James is special, O'Neal is special, Matthews is special. But it's pretty much what we've seen all year. I liken them a lot to USC's explosiveness.”

The win marked Stanford’s first in the NCAA Tournament since the Mike Montgomery-led 2003-04 squad reached the second round. Louisville routed Stanford 78-58 in Lexington, Ky. last year as did Mississippi State three years ago, 93-70.

“Nobody likes to mention it, but what really helped was the experience last year,” said Robin Lopez of the team’s focus leading into the Cornell game. “We knew we had to be prepared after last year.”

A 70-67 upset loss to Alabama broke the hearts of the 2003-04 team that started 26-0 and had dreamt about cutting down nets in April. All told, Stanford last reached the Sweet 16 in 2001, some seven seasons ago.

“Regardless of what you as a coach or as a staff talk about, it bothers them,” said Trent Johnson of the team’s recent NCAA struggles. “I mean, they read the papers, they listen to the news, and they wanted to come out and be extremely aggressive. But also they're smart enough to understand that Cornell's not Louisville, with all respect to Cornell. Cornell's not Mississippi State.”

The South Region’s top-seeded Memphis and No. 2 seed Texas were both idle the first day of the Tournament, an opening day that saw 14 of 16 higher-seeded teams advance. Only 11-seed Kansas State, an 80-67 victor over six-seed USC, and nine-seed Texas A&M, a 67-62 winner over eight-seed BYU, upset higher-ranked teams, though 15-seed Belmont came mighty close before falling 71-70 to America’s least favorite team, two-seed Duke.