SportsLine.com Report
March 19, 2000

Round 2: Carolina comes alive to upset Stanford

The dangerous thing about running into an underachieving North Carolina team is that you are still playing North Carolina. Sunday, the Tar Heels got big performances from Joseph Forte and Brendan Haywood and handed the Cardinal a 60-53 loss in the South Regional in Birmingham, Ala.

After making the Final Four two years ago as a third seed, the Cardinal has been bounced in consecutive years in the second round.

Last year, the second-seeded Cardinal was on 10th-seeded Gonzaga's victims list. Sunday, eighth-seeded North Carolina shook off a year's worth of frustration to end the Cardinal's season and advance to a Sweet 16 date with Tennessee.

It was a day where nothing really worked for the Cardinal. Stanford shot just 35 percent and allowed North Carolina to hit at 44 percent -- well above the 35 percent clip Cardinal opponents usually connect at. Freshman marksman Casey Jacobsen suffered through a 2-for-12 shooting day while Mark Madsen was harassed into a 2-of-7 outing.

Still, the game was close until Forte stepped up for North Carolina and drained consecutive 3-pointers at 4:22 and 3:40 of the second half. That turned a tie game into a six-point Carolina advantage, and the Heels would never again lead by fewer than four points.

As clutch as Forte was, Haywood might have been the biggest factor in Carolina's win. The much-maligned 7-footer scored 12 points and grabbed eight rebounds, but made his biggest impact on defense, where he blocked four shots and was an ominous presence in the paint.

How They Got There

The Cardinal spent the season as perhaps the most dominant team in the country ... until they lost back-to-back games within shouting distance of Selection Sunday.

That put a crimp in Stanford's tourney approach, and forced the Cardinal to share the Pacific-10 Conference championship with Arizona.

But coach Mike Montgomery's team still carried a 26-3 record into the tournament, with those three losses coming to Arizona (twice) and UCLA in games decided by a total of nine points.

Starting Lineup

• PG Michael McDonald (6-1, 175, Jr.): His stats aren't impressive (4.8 points, 4.5 assists) but he is steady, heady and always runs the show as coach Mike Montgomery wants.
• SG David Moseley (6-1, 175, Sr.): Had a break-out year as a senior after three years of waiting. Moseley ranks third on Stanford's all-time 3-point list behind Dion Cross and Kris Weems, and made more than 46 percent of his 3-balls this season.
• SF Casey Jacobsen (6-6, 210, Fr.): A remarkably complete player for a freshman, Stanford's leading scorer (14.6) became a starter midway through the season when Ryan Mendez struggled a bit. The team then thrived with Jacobsen starting and Mendez coming off the bench.
• PF Mark Madsen (6-9, 240, Sr.): Missed eight games early in the season due to a strained right hamstring. After taking a few games to shake off the rust, Madsen reverted to All-America form, averaging almost 17 points and 10 rebounds a game down the stretch, doing most of everything deep inside.
• PF Jarron Collins (6-10, 248, Jr.): Became a full-time starter for the first time and began the year with a bang, being named the MVP of the Coaches vs. Cancer Classic as Stanford beat Duke and Iowa. Very active defensively.

Keys To Success

Fun-da-men-tals.

There might be no more fundamentally sound team in the country than Stanford, which gets its wins the old-fashioned way -- through defense and rebounding. The Cardinal held teams to 35 percent, (the all-time record is 35.8 percent by Marquette in 1994) and averaged 42 rebounds per game -- almost 10 more than its opponents.

But unlike many great defensive teams of the past -- such as the UNLV amoeba defense of the early '90s, or Duke's teams of recent vintage -- the Cardinal doesn't do it through pressure. Stanford ranked last in the Pac-10 in steals for the second straight season.

Instead, Stanford simply plays an incredibly tight halfcourt man-to-man defense and allowed few open shots -- and virtually none at all inside of 20 feet. Duke, for instance, made only 28.2 percent of its shots in the season opener.

"Stanford just doesn't allow easy shots,'' said Arizona coach Lute Olson. "They have so much depth that they never have to worry about guys trying to play defense while tired. With Moseley and McDonald, they have the ability to put pressure on your perimeter.''

And if you do get a shot off inside, it's got a good chance of being blocked. The Cardinal swatted away more than five shots a game.

"If you beat their perimeter defense, their size and shot-blocking ability takes away what you thought was going to be an easy opportunity,'' said Washington coach Bob Bender.

So it's a pretty basic formula, really -- Stanford forces you to miss more than 60 percent of your shots, then gets all of the rebounds.

Offensively, Stanford is as balanced as any team in the country, with four of five starters averaging 11-14 points, so it doesn't matter too much when a Cardinal or two have an off-night.

The Cardinal gets scoring inside from Madsen and the Collins twins while Moseley, Jacobsen and Mendez each ranked in the top five in the Pac-10 in 3-point shooting, each making better than 41 percent.

The Coach

Mike Montgomery has done what not long ago was thought to be undoable -- turned Stanford into a consistent national power in basketball. Montgomery's predecessor, Dr. Tom Davis, left Stanford in 1986 saying that the school's rigid academic standards would make it impossible to ever compete at the highest level. It took awhile, but Montgomery has proven otherwise.

Remember, this is Monty's 14th year on the farm -- he went 7-23 overall and 2-16 in his seventh year there in the 1992-93 season. But the following season, Brevin Knight showed up in Palo Alto and Stanford has been in a post-season tournament of one kind or another every year since.

The Bench

This might be Stanford's biggest strength -- nobody's deeper than the Cardinal. Seven guys play 20 minutes or more a game, and two others average more than 12.

Most important is where Stanford is deep -- in the frontcourt.

Freshman Jason Collins is finally injury free and has consistently improved as the year has gone on. If either Madsen or Jarron Collins gets in foul trouble, the Cardinal loses almost nothing by going to Jason Collins.

Also big off the bench is small forward Ryan Mendez, who ranks fifth in the Pac-10 in 3-point shooting at 41 percent. Again, the Cardinal loses little by replacing Jacobsen or Moseley with Mendez.

Sophomore Tony Giovacchini has also emerged as a capable backup at point guard while freshman guard Julius Barnes is an exciting, if so far untapped, talent.

The only chink in the armor has been an injury that has sidelined freshman center Curtis Borchardt, who had emerged as another solid backup inside.

Offense

Because of Stanford's strong inside game, there is a common misconception that the Cardinal doesn't run much. But Stanford scored more than 80 points a game this season. The Cardinal players, however, rarely force the action, and taking good shots is a primary reason the team shot better than 47 percent from the floor this season. Stanford also shot better than 39 percent from 3-point range, thanks mostly to Moseley, Jacobsen and Mendez.

Defense

After UCLA and Arizona made more than 50 percent of their shots against Stanford in early March, the Cardinal defense concluded the regular season by showing that its still got it. They put the clamps on Arizona State to the tune of 29-percent shooting, to finish the season with an NCAA-record .352 mark for field-goal percentage defense.

Stanford does it by playing physical inside and smart outside. Despite its physical play, the Cardinal committed almost 150 fewer fouls than their opponents. It's a sign that they don't reach foolishly, don't try to block shots incessantly know what they can get away with. If foul trouble becomes an issue, the Cardinal is so deep that it's rarely a problem.