Now that we are officially in the offseason, it’s time to take a look back and evaluate each team’s 2012-13 performance. Here’s a look at Stanford.

What Went Right

After three years of showing signs of a mouthwatering combination of skill and athleticism, Dwight Powell exploded in his junior campaign. At 6’10” and a now well-built 235 pounds, Powell displayed the type of versatile game that will have him playing in the NBA following the completion of his college career. He’s always had the hops and size to throw down massive dunks, but he’s now got the ball-handling, basketball IQ and, perhaps most importantly, confidence to complete those types of plays with defenders in the area. Throw in an excellent feel for rebounding the ball, a developing jumper that is slowly approaching the three-point line, improved post moves and a variety of ways to finish in the paint and Powell has established himself as one of the best and most exciting players in the Pac-12.

Dwight Powell Had A Breakout Season In His Junior Campaign (AP)

Before we leave this topic, we’ve got to spend a second on Andy Brown. After three ACL tears in his left knee, it was just assumed that the chances of the 6’7” forward every being a meaningful on-court contributor at the Division I level had passed. Instead, Brown made for one of the nicest stories in this or any other season. He played in all but one Cardinal game this season, averaged 23 minutes a night, and wasvery effective, displaying a toughness (as if you didn’t already know that a guy who had rehabbed from three torn ACLs was tough) and a feel for the game that can’t be taught. Already 22, he’s got at least one year of college eligibility ahead of him and here’s hoping it is another healthy and productive season.

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Stanford played an exhibition game against UNC Pembroke on Sunday afternoon at Maples Pavilion, and here are five thoughts on the Cardinal’s performance.

Josh Huestis had a double-double for the Cardinal in 14-point exhibition victory over UNC Pembroke. (credit: Bob Drebin)

1. Too close for comfort? The final score read Stanford 85, UNC Pembroke 71, but it was a single-digit game for most of the way, and Stanford actually trailed the Braves 8-2 about six minutes into the game. As we discussed with Washington’s exhibition nail-biter, however, the closeness of the game doesn’t really mean too much. Also, Stanford’s Dwight Powell and Stefan Nastic didn’t play in this game for undisclosed reasons. Don’t judge this team before the November 9 opener against San Francisco.
2. John Gage has diversified his game. The official roster says Gage has put on 10 pounds from last year to this year, and it showed in the way he plays. The junior known for his shooting touch held his own strength-wise against a 255-pound UNC Pembroke post player and had a sequence in the first half where he blocked a shot, stole a post entry pass, got a couple of rebounds, and hit a three. These are exactly the kind of things Gage needs to do to earn more minutes on the floor. As one of the tallest guys on the team, Gage will need to prove he can play in the post and body up with the likes of a Kaleb Tarczewski, Aziz N’Diaye or Josh Smith. If he can hold his own on the defensive end, Gage will be rewarded with more time and hence more opportunities to unleash it from deep on the offensive end. At the end of the day, Gage amassed 11 points and seven rebounds to go along with two blocks and two steals.
3. Josh Huestis is more confident with the rock. The shooting stroke was already there for Huestis last year, but he was hardly consistent from outside of the key. While he didn’t connect on three three-point attempts, he showed more assertiveness in his jump shot and connected on 50 percent of his field goal attempts, not all of which were bunnies (one left wing 18-footer comes to mind). He also did all the other things that makes Huestis so valuable to the team, grabbing 12 rebounds and swatting away a shot.
4. It will take some time for the freshmen to get adjusted. Each of the three new guys (Rosco Allen, Christian Sanders and Grant Verhoeven) showed why they were sought by Johnny Dawkins and his staff, but they will all understandably need at least a few games to be able to contribute in a meaningful manner to the Cardinal lineup. The biggest positive for the freshmen is that none of them seemed to shy away from the moment — Sanders swished a jumper on his second offensive possession of the game, Allen calmly stroked a 17-footer, and Verhoeven — as advertised — didn’t mind getting dirty down low and collecting an offensive rebound to go along with six points and two assists.
5. Free throws. This team only shot 67 percent from the free throw line last year, often missing key tries late in games to keep the opposition alive. It wasn’t any better against the Braves yesterday, as the Cardinal made just 21 of its 33 free throw attempts for the game (64 percent). Yes, it was just an exhibition game and yes, there were probably some first-game jitters involved, but that percentage needs to be around 70% to give the Cardinal the best chance to pull out close games in the regular season.

1. For those who want to take a look at the NIT Champion Stanford basketball team, the Cardinal will be holding their own version of Midnight Madness this Friday. Titled “Friday Frenzy”, the night will feature a Cardinal-White scrimmage, an open women’s practice, and a dunk contest. The scrimmage will certainly be worth the price of free admission as the 2012-13 Cardinal looks to make a run at the NCAA Tournament. They have a potential all-conference backcourt in the duo of Chasson Randle and Aaron Bright, and expect the post play to be much improved as Johnny Dawkins welcomes in Rosco Allen and Grant Verhoeven. The event should get Cardinal fans revved up for a big weekend of sports, as the football team will be playing in the Big Game a mere 18 hours later. Stanford will open up the exhibition season on November 4 against UNC Pembroke.
2. After finishing 2011-12 with an awful 6-26 record, USC is a trendy pick for “team to surprise” this year in the Pac-12. Excitement took a bit of a hit last month when it was learned that junior guard Maurice Jones would have to sit out the year due to academics, but the return of Jio Fontan from injury will help out the backcourt. The revamped roster will feature five transfers, all of whom can contribute immediately. J.T. Terrell (Peninsula College) and Ari Stewart (Wake Forest), both of whom played together in Winston-Salem before ending up in Los Angeles, are expected to make the biggest impact. Throw in a pair of incoming freshmen in Strahinja Gavrilovic and Brendyn Taylor, junior center Dewayne Dedmon, and senior forward Aaron Fuller, and Kevin O’Neill has a pretty nice 10-man rotation to play around with. And while finding valuable minutes for everyone might be tough early on, it will be a welcome challenge for a team that struggled with depth issues all of last season.
3. Be sure to check all of your Twitter feeds this morning (or whatever you use to follow the decisions of 18-year-old kids), as the Contra Costa Times reported yesterday that Marcus Lee would be announcing his college choice at some point throughout the day. One of the top forwards in the nation, the Deer Valley High School (CA) prospect has narrowed his choices down to California and Kentucky. Lee was supposed to take a visit to Berkeley this weekend and take in the Big Game experience, but he has apparently come to a decision after taking in “Big Blue Madness” last Friday in Lexington.
4. The guys over at Bruins Nation have put together an extensive look at both the best and worst case scenarios for the 2012-13 UCLA Bruins. On the best case side of things, “DCBruins” has Ben Howland’s bunch going 10-2 in non-conference action with losses to Georgetown and Missouri. The Bruins then go on to win the Pac-12 with a 15-3 record before making the Final Four. The worst case scenario doesn’t go over any specific games or records, but instead focuses on what the Bruin rotation will look like if Shabazz Muhammad and Kyle Anderson aren’t cleared to play.
5. Speaking of Muhammad and Anderson’s eligibility, the Los Angeles Times covered that exact topic this morning. Bill Plaschke‘s column discusses how the team’s media day was monitored by the school’s vice-chancellor for legal affairs, and that the silence being put forth by the program is putting itself under a dark cloud. But as Plaschke states at the end, most everyone “would rather have UCLA chase those big stars and endure the NCAA microscope than settle for the mediocre acquisitions who never are noticed.” And even if recruiting classes like the one Howland brought in this season may label him as a “cheater,” he had no choice. It’s safe to say Howland’s job is on incredibly thin ice, and without guys like Jordan Adams, Tony Parker, Muhammad, and Anderson, Howland very well might not have survived the duration of the 2012-13 campaign. So even if the program is under a cloud now, it’ll be worth it in the long run that Howland brought these big names in.

We’re most of the way through our week-long look at the Cardinal and have at least enough information to make some educated guesses about what the 2012-13 season has in store. With four players lost to graduation and a trio of highly rated recruits coming in, we can expect to see a different, and likely better, team than won the NIT Championship last year. But who exactly will lead this team and what will the final results be? Here are our guesses.

Stanford’s Leading Scorer – Chasson Randle. No doubt about this one. Randle’s average of 13.8 PPG last season might drop a bit due to him trying to become more of a passing threat, but there’s no question that he is the best scorer on the roster. The next step for Randle is to become an All-Pac-12 guard, and he’s got the talent and scoring ability to do so.

Randle’s Ability To Take the Ball To The Rack And Score Will Make Him Stanford’s Leading Scorer For The Second Straight Season (credit: Paul Sakuma)

Stanford’s MVP – Aaron Bright. Bright is the team’s truest point guard and has shown good growth in his first two seasons on the Farm. If the upward trend continues, he should be averaging around 13 PPG and 5 APG next season. Overall, he’s not a better talent than Randle, but his nose for the ball and on-floor leadership make him one of the most important players on the team.

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As we go to wind down our coverage of the Stanford basketball program, we head back to Adam Butler of Pachoops for his perspective on the Cardinal basketball program. Adam and I go over every pressing topic surrounding the team’s immediate future, including how they plan on replacing three key seniors and expectations for sophomore-to-be extraordinaire, Chasson Randle. Here’s our conversation:

RTC: How do the Cardinal replace players like Josh Owens, Jarrett Mann, and Andrew Zimmerman?

AB: First of all, you don’t replace an Andrew Zimmerman. Beards like that don’t come around often, but when they do, they’re irreplaceable. On the court, however, Mann and Zimmerman were very solid role players and integral to the success of a Johnny Dawkins team in which hustle and defense would seem to be heavily rewarded. How else does a guy averaging 3 PPG and 3 RPG (Mann) play 20 MPG? So replacing those guys in some respects is easy in that they brought effort to the table. Guys like Josh Huestis, Gabriel Harris, and John Gage should be able to fill those roles. But it’s Owens who leaves the most gaping hole in the Cardinal lineup. Hustle, effort, all of the Tebow stuff, cannot replace talent, and Josh Owens had that. I loved his game and believe he’ll be tough to replace. But this is a roster seemingly full of eligible Owens replacements. My favorite of those candidates is Dwight Powell, who has length and athleticism for days but basketball IQ for minutes. Some more floor time for the rangy Canadian should go a long way in helping the Cardinal replace Owens. I’ll talk about Anthony Brown later.

Before Playing Basketball At Stanford, Zimmerman Starred As The Geico Caveman

RTC: Through some luck and upsets along the way, Stanford never faced a team seeded higher than fifth in the NIT. Do you think it would have won the whole thing if they had to face teams like Mississippi, Arizona, and Seton Hall instead of Illinois State, Nevada, and Massachusetts?

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The 2012-13 version of the Cardinal will not be missing any redshirts or transfers, but coach Johnny Dawkins does welcome in three highly rated recruits. Below, we’ll introduce you to each of those three newcomers, roughly in the order of impact that they’ll have on their new team.

• Rosco Allen, Freshman, Wing, 6’9” 210 lbs, Bishop Gorman High School, Las Vegas, NV – Allen is a classic Johnny Dawkins wing, one who is big enough to bang on the boards but has a tremendous outside stroke as well. The one knock on Allen is his speed, especially in trying to guard the perimeter. That means he needs to bulk up this summer so he is able to guard opponents at the four. Allen should receive good minutes early on next season, but those will quickly dwindle if he isn’t able to keep up on the defensive end. The Cardinal have more than their share of big and lanky defenders in the post, so it’s either bulk up and play down there or improve lateral quickness in order to see more minutes at a less-filled three position on the roster. With that said, Allen didn’t receive offers from North Carolina, UNLV, and UCLA for nothing. He’s basically a bigger Chasson Randle, and he will definitely leave a footprint with the Cardinal by the time he leaves.
  

  Allen Has the Potential To Be The Next Chasson Randle By The Time He Leaves Palo Alto (credit: Sam Morris)

• Grant Verhoeven, Freshman, Center, 6’8” 215 lbs, Central Valley Christian High School, Visalia, CA – With the exception of Brook and Robin Lopez, Stanford has traditionally had smaller centers who have great offensive touch. Verhoeven fits perfectly within this description as he can not only knock down the elbow jumper, but has nice footwork and can turn over either shoulder and score the ball inside. Unfortunately, the one knock on the center is a big one; he has trouble scoring over bigger and more athletic post players, something he’ll run into often against Pac-12 opponents. Still, he has tremendous upside, and after a year in Dawkins’ system, he should be set to gain major minutes down the road. With so many players at a little-used position, Verhoeven will have a tough time earning solid minutes immediately, but down the road he is definitely someone to keep an eye on. Read the rest of this entry »

In last year’s NIT Championship campaign there were seven different Cardinal players who saw significant playing time under head coach Johnny Dawkins. Of those seven players, two will be lost in 2012-13 due to graduation. A third senior saw minutes when the situation or game plan called for it, and a fourth played mainly garbage minutes or was used in backup roles when an injury occurred. We fill you in on their details in the order of importance to the program below.

• Josh Owens – After playing just garbage minutes as a freshman in 2007-08, Owens saw a major increase in playing time as a sophomore the next year. Poised to build on that solid foundation, Owens was forced to sit out the 2009-10 campaign due to a private medical condition. While some speculated he would never play basketball again, Owens returned for what would be the best season of his college career, averaging 11.6 PPG and 6.5 RPG in just over 27 MPG. His scoring and rebounding stats were almost identical in his final season with the Cardinal, but 2011-12 saw a more aggressive Owens, mainly on the defensive end of the floor. Andy Brown, Stefan Nastic, and Jack Ryan will all be competing this October to try to fill Owens’ shoes, with Nastic being the current slight frontrunner. As for Owens, the forward/center did not receive an invite to either the NBA Combine or Portsmouth Invitational Tournament, and while he went undrafted, he impressed enough in team workouts to earn a spot on the Charlotte Bobcats Summer League roster. Owens didn’t see any action in the team’s first game, but scored six points and grabbed two rebounds in its second summer competition.

Out Of Stanford’s Four Graduating Seniors, Owens Will Be Missed The Most (credit: John Todd Images)

• Jarrett Mann – Mann still earned solid minutes as a senior, but due to the emergence of freshman star Chasson Randle, he saw a steep decrease in playing time compared with his sophomore and junior years. Due to Randle playing as a slash-and-score one, it appeared at times that Mann didn’t seem comfortable in his new role, which would led to indecisiveness both in passing the ball and scoring.

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Over the course of the next two weeks, the Pac-12 Microsite will break down each team’s season: what went well, what didn’t, and a look ahead at the future. Today’s subject: Stanford.

What Went Right

The Cardinal dominated its non-conference schedule, winning 15 of their 17 games outside of the Pac-12. It wasn’t the toughest non-conference schedule in the world, but Johnny Dawkins’ team did wind up with a pair of wins against NCAA Tournament teams (Colorado State and North Carolina State) prior to their conference slate, then ripped through a field of also-rans in the NIT in March. All told, the Cardinal displayed a pretty drastic improvement on the defensive end of the court, finishing in the top 20 nationally in Ken Pomeroy’s adjusted defensive efficiency numbers. And for a team that relied heavily on underclassmen (five different freshmen and sophomores played at least 40% of the team’s total minutes), there should still be plenty of room to improve, especially on the offensive end, in the near future.

What Went Wrong

While all that youth should pay off next year, it was the undoing of the Cardinal during the conference season. After getting off to a 5-1 start in Pac-12 play, the Cardinal lost five of their next six and struggled mightily, especially on the offensive end. Between Martin Luther King Day and Valentine’s Day they scored just 0.92 points per possession, highlighted by sophomore Aaron Bright’s 22-of-70 shooting during that stretch, good for just a 37.9% eFG.

In A Solid Year, As Aaron Bright Went, So Did The Cardinal (credit: Zach Sanderson)

MVP

On a squad that was a model of a team effort (11 different players averaged at least eight minutes per game, with six different players averaging somewhere between five points and 13 points per night), it is hard to pick out just one player, but the Cardinal were clearly a team whose fates aligned closely with Bright’s performance. He averaged four more points per game, one more assist and shot the ball nearly 20% better from behind the arc in wins than in losses. When Bright was going good, he was a tough defender, a confident floor general, and a deadly three-point shooter who made opposing defenses pay for collapsing in on interior players like senior Josh Owens. While there is something to be said for Owens’ 11.6 points, 5.8 rebounds and 57.1% field goal percentage (not to mention freshman Chasson Randle’s team-leading 13.8 points per game), Bright was really the most important player on this team, as evidenced by his near-perfect run through the NIT when he averaged 16.8 points, 4.2 assists and shot a whopping 79.5% eFG.

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On Thursday night, Stanford earned the right to be one of the handful of teams in Division I basketball to end its season with a win, storming to a 24-point win over Minnesota in the NIT Final. While plenty of people will write that off (with some reason) as just showing that the Cardinal are the 69^th best team in college hoops, what exactly does the win mean for Johnny Dawkins and his budding program?

Stanford Took Home The NIT Title, But What Does It Mean For Next Year? (Frank Franklin II/AP Photo)

Conventional wisdom says that an NIT win bodes well for the future, providing a springboard to success in the following season. Even a cursory glance at the history in the last decade shows that this is not really the case. Of the last 10 winners of the NIT, just four teams made the NCAA Tournament the following year, with only one team, West Virginia’s 2006-07 squad, actually earning a victory in the ensuing NCAA Tourney. In fact, over those 10 years, the NIT winners actually turned in a record the following year that was, on average, 4.3 games worse than the record in the year of the NIT win.

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Who’s Got Next? is a weekly column by Josh Paunil, the RTC recruiting guru. We encourage you to check out his website dedicated solely to college basketball recruiting, National Recruiting Spotlight, for more detailed recruiting information. Once a week he will bring you an overview of what’s going on in the complex world of recruiting, from who is signing where among the seniors to who the hot prospects are at the lower levels of the sport. If you have any suggestions as to areas we’re missing or different things you’d like to see, please let us know at rushthecourt@yahoo.com.

Lead Story: Arizona Secures Top 2012 Recruiting Class

Next Year These Heads Will Be Of Gabe York, Brandon Ashley, Grant Jerrett And Kaleb Tarczewski (C. Morrison/US Presswire)

Tarczewski Takes To Tucson. This is something I’m not used to, this is something you aren’t used to, this is something no one on the recruiting circuit  is used to. For the first time in four years, a head coach has assembled a downright dirty collection of talent into one recruiting class and his name isn’t John Calipari. Arizona head coach Sean Miller has beautifully crafted his 2012 recruiting class so it will resemble North Carolina’s group of big men this year when center Kaleb Tarczewski committed to Arizona pm Monday. Not only do the Wildcats have commitments from three of the top nine recruits in the senior class [according to ESPN] in addition to a top shooting guard in Gabe York, but they have two of the top three power forwards between Brandon Ashley and Grant Jerrett and the second best center in Tarczewski. This front court talent is scary considering the versatility and skill level of the players. If Miller doesn’t want to sit one of his star recruits, he could possibly slide Ashley to small forward since he’s a combo forward who likes playing on the wing as well. All of these big guys can move and get up and down the court and can be game-changers in so many ways. Here’s another thing to think about, the Wildcats got two of the top guards in the Class of 2011 with point guard Josiah Turner (#13) and shooting guard Nick Johnson (#28) and both players will definitely be staying longer than one year. I’m not going to go around and start predicting 2013 NCAA tournament Final Four teams, but I wouldn’t bet against Arizona.

What They’re Saying

• Senior standout Dominic Artis on committing to Oregon: “I really thought it was the best fit style-of-play wise after watching practice and I liked the athletes that are already in the program. [Class of 2011 shooting guard] Jabari [Brown] and I have been together since fourth or fifth grade. Him being there sure didn’t hurt. It gave me a nice comfort level and someone I could relate to.”