Improvement a must after exhibition win

A few things were readily apparent when the Stanford men played Sonoma State in an exhibition Tuesday night at Maples Pavilion.

KZ Okpala and Daejon Davis, the Cardinal’s only returning starters, will be hard to contain on drives to the hoop. Oscar da Silva has a fine allaround game. Freshman guard Cormac Ryan can shoot and pass.

At the same time, the Cardinal don’t have much of a lowpost offense since Reid Travis defected to Kentucky and Michael Humphrey graduated.

Against the Seawolves, the Cardinal were ready, willing but not quite so able to run for most of the night. Despite an uneven performance, they pulled away at the end to beat the Division II Seawolves 7559.

On the plus side, the Cardinal had nine dunks. On the minus side, they made just 14 of 28 free-throw tries.

“Compared to last year’s team, it’s a clean slate in terms of what we’re doing on the floor,” head coach Jerod Haase said. “Daejon, KZ and Oscar were complementary players on the team last year.”

Now they’re they’re the nucleus of a very young roster.

Stanford led just 36-32 at the half after being outrebounded 17-15. It took control in the second half and finished with a 37-28 advantage on the boards.

“We started off slow,” Davis said. “You can’t have that going into the season. In the second half, we played more together. We’ve got to come out better in the first half and have more energy.”

Okpala led Stanford with 20 points. Davis had 16 and da Silva added 14 and nine rebounds. Freshman Aaron Porcil led Sonoma State with 11 points, and Wesley Gilbert had 10.

For the freshmen, “certainly it could be a learning film session,” Haase said. “It’s a test in trusting the coaches and each other. In a lot of ways, they’re slow to get the message.”

The Cardinal officially open Haase’s third season on the Farm when they host Seattle on Tuesday night.