Weak conference gives Card a shot

Conference play in the Pac-10 is two weeks old and here’s what is certain: nothing.

Rather, very little. It’s been long presumed and now established that the Pac-10 is nothing short of awful this season. There’s a legitimate possibility that just one team — the conference champion, which earns an automatic bid — will receive a spot in the NCAA Tournament. For the first time in history of the poll, no Pac-10 team was ranked in the coaches’ top 25 this week. There is no alpha dog. Cal and Washington were supposed to assume those roles, but the Bears lost at home to a poor UCLA squad and the Huskies are currently last in the conference with a 1-3 record. Unlike the Big East (or even the football side of the Pac-10), where good teams mercilessly beat up on each other, the Pac-10 features mediocre squads struggling to rise above. It’s a curious conference where, it appears, nearly everyone has a shot, because no one has distinguished themselves.

Enter Stanford (8-7, 2-1 Pac-10), perhaps the hardest team to get a read on. Since the season began, the Cardinal has had its fair share of close losses that could easily have gone the other way. A last second running jumper led to a two-point loss to Oral Roberts. Stanford came within a made free throw of knocking off Kentucky, currently the No. 2 team in the country. The Cardinal then went on to lose by a single point to Oklahoma State and went to the wire with Northwestern. It wasn’t until Stanford squeezed out a win over USC that a close game went its way. But flip those losses and the country would be buzzing about one of the nation’s most surprising teams.

Of course, that cannot happen and there are reasons why Stanford lost those games. First, the Cardinal has struggled with its free throw shooting all year, a problem that has directly contributed to many of its losses. Second, Stanford is a young team still trying to find its way — at the beginning of the season, only senior Landry Fields was a truly known quantity.

Even now, the lineup includes Fields, a former walk-on, a transfer from Santa Clara by way of Foothill and two first-year starters who are both filling the shoes of long-time Stanford players. The reserves are career backups and current and former walk-ons.

So why is Stanford, a team widely predicted to finish last in the Pac-10, currently tied for the conference lead and sitting with a winning record?

First, Fields has fulfilled the potential inherent in him since he first stepped onto the Farm and in his final season, has become the quintessential veteran leader. He is second in the conference in scoring, rebounds and steals, but he’s also eleventh in assists.

Second, sophomore Jeremy Green has become one of the best sharpshooters in the nation. He single handedly helped the Cardinal stay close against Northwestern — he’s taken over 100 three-point shots, but drains 43.4 percent of them. As a shooting guard, that rate would be good as an overall shooting percentage; to be that efficient from long distance alone is eye opening.

And no one will fault the Cardinal’s effort — they’ve taken all the doubts and transformed them into a positive. It’s a high-energy squad that makes up for gaps in talent with its relentlessness. Sophomores Jack Trotter and Andrew Zimmermann, for example, hounded UCLA’s Reeves Nelson throughout last weekend’s contest and held the acclaimed freshman to just eight points.

The issue for the Cardinal is that outside of Fields and Green, it’s never clear who will pick up the scoring slack. Trotter and Zimmermann have shown the ability to score in the low teens, but neither one does with much consistency and both have occasional issues with rebounding. Drew Shiller is draining over 47 percent of his takes from behind the arc, but he can also disappear for games at time. Point guard Jarrett Mann leads the conference in assists per game and backup Da’Veed Dildy is a lockdown defender and good ball handler, but neither has developed a good shot.

It adds up to this: there are few constants with the Cardinal, but someone will generally step up and fill a void and not every contribution is necessarily through scoring. Coach Johnny Dawkins — who completely undressed John Calipari, one of the country’s preeminent coaches, in Cancun — has had success optimizing his talent and compensating for off-days.

And yet with all the uncertainties, it remains hard to project how Stanford will do on a given night. But if the Cardinal can beat a good Washington State team and underperforming but talented Washington squad, both on the road, its frame should further come into focus.