Stanford: Grant Verhoeven is making the most of his role.
Grant Verhoeven learned the value of hard work growing up on a farm in the Central Valley. He learned plenty about basketball from his father, a former NBA player.
He also learned how to play while hurt as a backup center for Stanford.
The 6- foot- 9 redshirt junior has had to do all the dirty work — hitting the boards, setting screens, defending other post players — as a trusted reserve during his four seasons. Lately, he’s even been doing some scoring, collecting 30 points in the past five games after getting just 14 in the first 16.
Being a role player was a big departure from his high school days, when he averaged 23 points as a junior and 27 as a senior.
“It makes no difference to me how many points I put in the books,” he said. “It’s all about results for me.”
The Cardinal ( 11- 10, 4- 6 Pac- 12) badly need a sweep of the Oregon schools this week to keep their flagging NCAA hopes alive. They take a 9- 4 home record into Thursday night’s game against Oregon State ( 14- 8, 5- 6) at Maples Pavilion. They beat the Beavers 78- 72 in Corvallis a month ago, but Stanford has lost three in a row and Oregon State swept Utah and Colorado last week.
“We got a lot of offensive rebounds” in the first matchup against the Beavers, Verhoeven ( pronounced VER-hoov- in) said. “That helped us get a lot of second- chance points. Coach ( Johnny) Dawkins always talks about playing harder, smarter and more together. That game, we did that very well. So we’ve got to do that again Thursday.”
As usual, his father, Pete, will make the 31⁄ 2- hour drive from Hanford ( Kings County) to see the game. A former Fresno State star, Pete played for four teams, including the Warriors, in a six- year NBA career ( 1981- 87), then played a couple of years in Spain.
The last time the two Verhoevens played oneonone, incidentally, was when Grant was a sophomore at Central Valley Christian High- Hanford. “We had to end it a little early,” Grant said. “It gets feisty.”
So who won? His father claims he won, but Grant says, “I’m pretty sure I won.”
Like his father, he grew up on a 40- acre corn and alfalfa farm. His greatgrandfather settled in the area after emigrating from the Netherlands.
“Two years ago we planted walnut trees,” Grant said. “It’s a fiveyear turnover before they start producing, so we’re still waiting for that.”
He has waited almost that long to be able to play fully healthy. He came to the Farm with a fracture in his left hip — he doesn’t know how it happened — but doctors said he could play with it. Toward the end of his sophomore year, the pain became too much to handle.
“The last 10 or 15 games, I was getting a shot before every game, just to play through it,” he said.
He ended up with labrum damage in both hips and had two operations, a month apart, to repair them. He missed the first seven games of 2014- 15, appeared in eight games before missing the rest of the season and receiving a medical redshirt. A stress fracture in his heel set back his rehab going into this season.
After not attempting a three- point shot in his first 74 career games, Verhoeven is 2- for- 2 in the past four games. “If the opportunity comes, we take it,” he said.