In what has become a recurring trend for Stanford men’s basketball, the winter break slate featured a number of near misses against prominent opponents, coupled with only a smattering of wins. Its conclusion – a 92-66 slaughtering at the hands of rival California – was the most disheartening loss to date.

The Cardinal came out of finals week in impressive fashion. UC-Davis’ (5-8, 1-0 Big West) trip to the Farm was an unsuccessful one – Stanford (6-7, 0-1 Pacific-10 Conference) rolled, 85-69. All five starters finished in double figures and sophomore Jack Trotter notched the best performance of his young career, registering a double-double with 14 points and 11 rebounds.

“I wanted to come out aggressive and get on them before they could get on us,” Trotter said.

Senior Landry Fields, per the usual, tallied 21 points to lead the Cardinal. Through 13 games he is 10th in the country and second in the conference with a 23.2 points per game average. He did not drop below 20 points in any of the winter break games.

That included a heartbreaking 71-70 defeat at the hands of a one-loss Oklahoma State team (11-2, 0-0 Big 12) at Maples in the Cardinal’s next contest. Stanford played one of its better games, particularly late in the second half, but could not overcome a 12-24 performance from the free throw line. Despite a double-digit deficit at the midway point of the half, the Cardinal closed the gap to one with seven seconds left. Fields, playing with four fouls and sophomore Andrew Zimmermann, whose 14 points were a career high, led the resurgence. With Fields feeding Zimmermann, the duo established a presence in the post that Oklahoma State had a hard time thwarting.

It seemed natural that the game’s final play would be designed for Fields, with Zimmermann playing a role, but it did not seem to go as planned – Zimmermann wound up with the ball and looked for Fields, who was fairly well defended. He chose instead to drive, with his shot falling innocently off the backboard.

“There was so much going in the last seconds,” Fields said. “It just shook out that I couldn’t get the ball.”

Stanford’s next contest was nearly as close. The Cardinal traveled to Illinois to take on a surprising one-loss Northwestern squad. Senior Drew Shiller, who netted 12 points on 4-5 shooting from beyond the arc, led the Cardinal early. Though tied at the half, the Wildcats (10-3, 0-2 Big 10) created a 10-point lead with under six minutes to play, but nine straight points from Stanford sharpshooter sophomore Jeremy Green cut that gap to one with under two minutes left.

But further success was fleeting – Northwestern hit their shots and Stanford did not. The Wildcats emerged victorious, 70-62. It was another attainable win that fell out of the Cardinal’s grasp – the team was not helped by its 28 team fouls, as opposed to Northwestern’s 13. Free throws continued to be an issue, as Stanford again shot just 50 percent from the charity stripe.

Fields and Green continued to impress against Texas Tech (12-2, 0-0 Big 12), combining for 51 points and 19 rebounds, but the Cardinal, despite just a four point halftime deficit, fell behind early in the second period and could not recover – the Red Raiders maintained a steady lead throughout and won 100-87.

There were silver linings in the three losses to teams with a combined three defeats at the time. Among them were Fields’s continued dominance and Green’s development into one of the nation’s best three-point threats.

But the shortcomings were also evident. Sophomore Jarrett Mann took over point guard duties early in the year, but he turned the ball over a combined 16 times over the first two losses. Outside of Zimmermann against Oklahoma State, there was practically no post presence.

The Cardinal did pick up a win against James Madison (6-6, 0-2 CAA) in a harder-than-expected game. The Dukes led early and prevented Stanford from pulling away, even at home. Still, the Cardinal was able to create a large enough gap later and led by nine with 14 seconds left; it took two desperation three pointers by James Madison to bring the final score to 80-76.

But the victory was only a brief respite – Stanford’s foray into Pac-10 competition began with a drubbing in Berkeley. The Bears (9-4, 1-0 Pac-10) led by 20 at the half and had no answer for senior Jerome Randle, one of the main contenders (along with Fields) for conference Player of the Year.

“Offensively, we wanted to run our offense. We thought that we’ve been doing that pretty efficiently all year long and we wanted to continue to try to come down and play with some poise, keep good spacing, move the basketball and share it,” said Head Coach Johnny Dawkins. “At times, we were able to do it well, but we weren’t able to consistently do it well enough.”

The road does not get any easier, as Stanford will host USC, one of the best defensive teams in the country, on Wednesday, as the Cardinal delves deeper into Pac-10 play, with a 2-4 winter break record in hand.