Freshman point guard provides lift
What a difference a point guard makes. Cal’s best point guard, Paris Austin, was on the bench Sunday night, waiting to become eligible next season after transferring from Boise State.
Stanford’s best point guard, Daejon Davis, was right in the middle of the action, putting his fingerprints all over the best plays of the night.
The freshman scored 22 points on 7-for-10 shooting and added seven rebounds and five assists to lead Stanford to a methodical 77-73 victory at Haas Pavilion.
Cal (8-19, 2-12 Pac-12), which has lost 12 of its past 13 games, split its point-guard duties between Darius McNeill and Don Coleman. That comboneeded 26 shots to match Davis’ produc-
tion on 10 shots.
The Bears got 15 points and nine rebounds from Marcus Lee, 15 points and six rebounds from Justice Sueing and a personalhigh 13 points from freshman Juhwan HarrisDyson, but when Stanford switched to a zone defense in the second half, Cal managed to connect on only 30.6 percent of its shots.
“They pretty much dared us to shoot the ball,” said Cal head coach Wyking Jones, whose squad went 3-for-18 from three-point range.
Stanford (14-13, 8-6), which lost the conference opener to the Bears, hasn’t been swept in the season series since the 2009-10 season. The Cardinal got 17 points from Dorian Pickens, 13 points and 10 rebounds from Reid Travis and 11 points and seven rebounds from Michael Humphrey on a night when they coughed up 16 turnovers.
Many of the turnovers happened when Davis went to the bench with two fouls at the 17:25 mark of the first half. Without its point guard, Stanford had trouble initiating its offense, and the Bears used a flurry of live-ball turnovers to ignite a 10-3 outburst.
Coleman had four points and an assist during the crowd-captivating spurt and controlled the tempo for much of the first half. He had a no-look pass to McNeill for a layup and lobbed an alley-oop to Lee on back-to-back possessions to put Cal ahead 34-30 with 2:45 to play.
“It was good to see that and feel that in the building,” Jones said of the crowd of 8,482.
Davis scored five points in the closing minute of the first half to give the Cardinal a one-point lead, despite going into halftime with 10 turnovers. There were two ties and four lead changes in the first 5½ minutes of the second half, but Stanford appeared to be taking control after going ahead 46-44 on two KZ Okpala free throws at the 14:37 mark.
The Cardinal were still ahead by five points when they started to miss freethrow tries. Cal used the lapse to twice tie the game, including a three-point play by Harris-Dyson that knotted it 66-66 with less than five minutes remaining.
After the teams traded free throws, Stanford took advantage of McNeill and Harris-Dyson both fouling out by the 3:45 mark and scored five straight for a 72-67 lead. After Cal made it 75-73 with 10 seconds left, Pickens hit two free throws to ice it.
“It wasn’t picture perfect, but at the end of the day, we made enough plays,” Stanford head coach Jerod Haase said. “Dorian really worked to get the ball and get fouled for those free throws at the end. That’s what senior captains do.”