Scouting report: No. 3 Arizona Wildcats vs. Stanford Cardinal

The Star's Bruce Pascoe breaks down the starting lineups, storylines and stats as the No. 3-ranked Arizona Wildcats travel to face the Stanford Cardinal Thursday night in Palo Alto.

What: No. 3 Arizona (14-1, 4-0) at Stanford (10-5, 3-2)

Where: Maples Pavilion

When: 9 p.m.

TV: ESPNU

Radio: 1290-AM, 107.5-FM

Social media: @TheWildcaster on Twitter / TheWildcaster on Facebook

Probable starters: Arizona

G Kerr Kriisa (6-3 sophomore)

G Dalen Terry (6-6 sophomore)

F Bennedict Mathurin (6-6 sophomore)

F Azuolas Tubelis (6-11 sophomore)

C Christian Koloko (7-0 junior)

Probable starters: Stanford

G Michael O’Connell (6-2 sophomore)

G Harrison Ingram (6-7 freshman)

F Spencer Jones (6-7 junior)

F Jaiden Delaire (6-9 senior)

C James Keefe (6-9 junior)

How they match up

The series: The Cardinal snapped a 20-game losing streak to the Wildcats last season, holding on to beat UA 78-75 on Dec. 19, 2020 when UA guard James Akinjo was called for a charge with seven seconds left and the Wildcats trailing by a point. In a game that was played in Santa Cruz, California, because of Santa Clara County health measures, guard Jemarl Baker led UA with 29 points on 8-for-13 3-point shooting. Then Stanford won 73-64 at McKale Center on Jan. 28, 2021, when Jaiden Delaire had 21 points on 7-for-12 shooting and the Wildcats shot only 41.5% from the field.

Arizona last beat Stanford on Feb. 15, 2020, when Zeke Nnaji had 21 points and 11 rebounds in a 69-60 win at Maples Pavilion. Arizona leads series 64-24 in Pac-10/12 play and 68-31 alltime.

This season: The Wildcats and Cardinal are scheduled to meet again on March 3 at McKale Center, the second-to-last game of the regular season.

Stanford overview: Booted out of Santa Clara County for five games last season, Stanford is making the best of Maples Pavilion so far this season, going 7-0 at home including a 75-69 win over USC on Jan. 11.

The Cardinal is coming off a split in Washington last weekend, beating WSU by five and losing at UW by three. At 3-2 in the conference so far, Stanford is in position to make a run for the conference’s top four spots, with a big lineup that rebounds well on both sides of the floor and emphasizes going inside for 62.9% of its shots.

Freshman Harrison Ingram leads the Cardinal in scoring (11.9) and rebounding (6.9). He’s one of several interchangeable forwards that can play inside or outside, along with Jaiden Delaire and Spencer Jones, while versatile sophomore Brandon Angel and Lithuanian big man Lukas Kisunas help mostly off the bench.

Michael O’Connell is a tough, solid point guard who broke through as a freshman last season when injuries dismantled the Cardinal’s backcourt. He isn’t a 3-point threat (21.2%) but ranks 78th nationally in assist rate and has a 2-1 assist-turnover ratio. Freshman Isa Silva, a top UA recruiting target out of Sacramento, is the team’s backup point guard and has made 8 of 14 3s he’s taken.

While the Cardinal doesn’t emphasize 3-point shooting, Ingram (33.3%), Delaire (32.0%), Jones (31.7%) and Angel (44.4%) are all threats to step outside.

He said it: “They’re one of the biggest teams in the country. They can go big and they can go small if they want to, but they're very interchangeable in terms of their positions and what they do. Rebounding is one of their strengths and they go hard to the glass. So it’ll be a big battle there.

“Ingram is doing it all for them as a freshman and showing unbelievable leadership out there on the court and in terms of how he's playing. He can shoot the ball, he can post up, he can make plays. 

“Delaire certainly does a lot of good things for the team, gives them experience. He can post up, he can shoot the ball from the outside, make game winners from deep, so he's a very versatile player as well. Jones can shoot the basketball, he'll post up inside, he'll drive the ball to the basket. He's a very good scorer and someone that they like to get his hands on the ball. And off the bench, Angel has good size, mobility. He can shoot the 3, drives to the basket, he scores in the paint.

“The two, three and four positions are interchangeable. It’s like a chess match. (Stanford coach Jerod Haase) just moves them around to try to find an advantage.

“(Despite their frontcourt advantage) they have a number of of guys that have shown that they can make multiple 3-pointers in the game. You’ve gotta be concerned about that and you’ve gotta be concerned about the boards, and try not to let them get off to where they're controlling the flow of the game with their offense.”

— UA assistant coach Steve Robinson, who scouted the Cardinal.

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Key player (Stanford): Harrison Ingram

The Cardinal replaced a McDonald's All-American freshman (Ziaire Williams) with another one who has been even more impactful to them. Physically and mentally mature, Ingram is both filling boxscores and making his teammates better.

Key player (Arizona): Dalen Terry

Stanford’s myriad “hybrid” forwards mean a defensive challenge for a team expected to again be without Kim Aiken. Forward Azuolas Tubelis and center Christian Koloko will deal with the Cardinal forwards around the basket, but it will be up to wings Terry and Bennedict Mathurin to stop them on the perimeter.

Sidelines

Ho-ho-co(VID)

Everyone in college basketball has been forced to adapt in the COVID-19 era, but maybe nobody has quite like Stanford.

Last season, the Cardinal signed up to play in the Maui Invitational, which was moved to Asheville, North Carolina. En route to the “tropics,” the Cardinal learned they wouldn’t be able to return home without a quarantine because of local health order, so they wound up spending an entire week in North Carolina, then went to Los Angeles to face Cal State Northridge and up the coast to Santa Cruz, where they were forced to play the Wildcats and four other teams.

This season, the Cardinal ran into its own COVID-19 issues on Christmas Day. In Hawaii, of all places.

Stanford had to cut out of the Diamond Head championship game, then Haase stayed in Honolulu along with a few quarantined players, a manager and their director of operations, saying he even helped do laundry.

“It was more the idea that I’m not leaving my team behind,” Haase said. “The disappointing part for me was my family came back but my kids were heroes. They didn't open their presents until I got back, so they had to wait for Christmas.”

Then, this month Stanford announced that fans would not be allowed at indoor sporting events until Jan. 28, as part of a campus-wide effort at controlling the spread of Omicron, giving the Cardinal another disadvantage.

All that might just make the Cardinal the COVID-19 champs of college basketball.

“It's not a competition,” Haase said. “But we probably are winning that competition.”

Just like old times

The Wildcats and Cardinal will be playing without fans at Maples Pavilion. Only 50 total family members per team plus media will be allowed in the building, in a move Stanford says is aimed at better ensuring in-person classes will be able to resume later this month.

Since Arizona always draws well at Stanford, it isn’t clear who this helps, if anybody. But UA coach Tommy Lloyd wasn’t looking at it as a problem.

“I don’t know how it could be an added challenge for the road team. Usually, the home team usually has most fans,” Lloyd said. “We're gonna go in there and focus and play basketball. And our guys know it's not like we're gonna be playing the game in a vacuum. It's going to be on TV, people are going to be watching and their friends and family are still going to get to see them.”

“We're going to go in there and it's going to be a bunker mentality for Arizona basketball.”

Then there’s guard Bennedict Mathurin, who has routinely played well on the road both this season and last. Among other performances, he broke out with 31 points and eight rebounds in OSU’s empty arena last season.

“To be honest, I'm pretty used to it from last year so it won't really be a problem,” Mathurin said. “It is pretty good to have fans at the at the games but you know if we have to play and not having fans, I'm totally fine with it.”

But Stanford does have this advantage: It has yet to lose at home this season, even beating USC without the benefit of having its fans show up for the Jan. 11 game at Maples Pavilion.

“We don't really have a whole lot of highs and lows within the program,”  Haase said. “We really focus on the next play or the next practice, or the next game. Not having fans for the USC game was a small obstacle compared to everything we went through last year. So our guys really do a nice job of handling all that.”

Friendship on pause

One of the upsides of being marooned in North Carolina last season for Haase was that the Cardinal relocated to Chapel Hill after the “Maui” tournament ended, allowing him to spend time with Arizona assistant coach Steve Robinson in and around the UNC campus.

The two have a long history together.

Robinson was an assistant coach on the Roy Williams Kansas teams that Haase played for in the 1990s, and later served with him on Williams’ staffs at Kansas and North Carolina.

“I consider Coach Robinson a friend,” Haase said. “We had a few conversations and we actually met outside one morning and had a cup of coffee to talk basketball.”

Of course, being friends in the coaching business also means having to put that all aside at times. Robinson is even scouting the Cardinal this week, using his knowledge of Haase's tendencies to help find ways to beat him.

“At the end of the day, I like Jerod, but I also know what I have to do,” Robinson said. “He's the same way. That's just athletics. That’s competition. Guys play against each other. They're the best of friends, but once you've cross that line and you play, you're not thinking about `That's my best friend down there.’ It’s `I’m trying to win the ball game.”

Numbers game

0 – Stanford wins over Arizona at Maples Pavilion since the 2008-09 season.

14.4 - Seconds in an average Arizona possession, the fastest in the country.

14 – Stanford’s rank in defensive rebounding percentage (77.6)

24 – Stanford’s rank in offensive rebounding percentage (34.9)