Cardinal stymies Beavers in rout

Stanford picked a good time to turn in its best defensive performance of the season.

With the salty taste of the Washington road trip still lingering and injuries piling up, the Cardinal (9-9, 3-3 Pac-10) beat Oregon State (8-10, 2-4 Pac-10) 59-35 at Maples Pavilion on Thursday.

The Beavers’ point total was the lowest for a Stanford opponent since December 2005.

“They’re a tremendous scoring team at times, but I think we played excellent defense,” said senior forward Landry Fields.

“We were alert,” said head coach Johnny Dawkins. “It was good to see our guys grow in that area.”

Oregon State’s own incompetence must be noted — the Beavers were never in sync in the second half and many of their mistakes could be attributed to self-inflicted errors. But it’s hard to take anything away from Stanford. The Beavers were held to 36.6 percent shooting and Roeland Schaftenaar, who pained Stanford last year, did not score.

The Cardinal’s supremacy was widespread. Stanford out-rebounded the Beavers, 38-22 and pulled down 14 offensive boards. The Cardinal forced 19 turnovers and held Oregon State scoreless for nearly a nine-minute stretch in the second half.

Although Stanford’s shutdown defensive performance will get the acclaim for this contest, the Cardinal was arguably even more impressive on offense.

The Beavers hounded Stanford last year with its 1-3-1 set, which could easily morph into man-to-man or another zone. By attacking the ball handler, Oregon State forces errant passes and desperate shots — but not Thursday.

“You always have to try and be coordinated and understand what they’re in first,” Dawkins said. “Our guys made very good reads. Our big guys were active, our perimeter guys were alert.”

Sophomore guard Jarrett Mann, who has shown flashes of brilliance coupled with disappointing outings throughout the year, played like a conductor leading a finely tuned orchestra. He posted six assists to only two turnovers and fed his teammates with beautiful pass after beautiful pass. Sophomore forward Jack Trotter, a frequent recipient of Mann’s dimes, had three dunks in the game, none of which were heavily contested, in large part because Mann was able to find the right seam at the right time.

“I talked to Jarrett about streamlining that consistency,” Dawkins said. “He was controlling our tempo. He set the table for the rest of our guys tonight.”

The benefactors, besides Trotter (10 points), were Fields (17 points) and sophomore Jeremy Green (13 points in an off-night). But a total of 11 players got into the action, both because of Stanford’s expansive lead and injuries to sophomore forward Andrew Zimmermann, a starter and freshman guard Gabriel Harris. Sophomore forwards Matei Daian and Elliott Bullock played significant minutes because of the weakened frontcourt depth.

“We don’t want to make excuses,” Fields said. “We’re going to need contributions from those guys whether we have injuries or not.”

The game began reasonably enough. Stanford led 9-8 after seven minutes, but Green and Fields made consecutive three-pointers to push the Cardinal lead to seven. While the Beavers prevented Stanford from pulling away, they could never quite close the gap and the Cardinal went to the locker room with a 28-22 advantage.

But while Oregon State was able to keep it close before halftime, it could do practically nothing after the break. The Cardinal outscored the Beavers 31-13 in the second half.

The teams traded misses for the first few minutes and until the 12:40 mark, Stanford’s lead hovered near 10 points — sizeable, but still within range for an Oregon State comeback. But in fairly rapid succession, Mann connected with Trotter for a dunk, Daian put back a missed shot, Mann found Trotter again and Green hit a three-pointer from just in front of the Stanford bench. Within that two-minute span, the Cardinal lead jumped from 11 to 16 and overall, in just over five minutes, Stanford doubled its previous eight-point advantage.

“It’s a mentality of attacking the rim hard and not letting anyone get in my way,” Trotter said about his low post performance.

After the 10-minute mark, the Cardinal took over in one of its most impressive stretches of the season. Stanford dominated in every aspect of the game. From that point until the end of the contest, the Cardinal pulled down six offensive rebounds, out-hustled Oregon State for loose balls, stole seven passes, showed good movement and clock management and didn’t allow a basket until there were under three minutes left. The exclamation point came with 7:21 remaining in the game. Fields beat his man off the dribble, drove and threw down an emphatic dunk to bring the Stanford lead to 50-30.

By the end of the game, walk-on and former practice player Peter Abraham was doing his best Fields impression, driving hard for two-points of his own. To say that the Cardinal was locked-in would be an understatement — the team was destructive and the Beavers could do nothing to stop it.

Stanford, now 8-2 at Maples, will try and maintain its home court dominance when it hosts Oregon on Saturday. The Ducks (10-8, 2-4 Pac-10) were blown out by Cal, 89-57, on Thursday and have lost four straight since beginning conference play 2-0.

Fields would like to see that slide continue.

“It’s a mindset,” he said. “We want to come home and protect our home court.”