Why was Shanahan running McCaffrey during garbage time? The 49ers just mortgaged the future to get him yet plow him straight up the middle three times to run out most of the clock with the game in hand. Then there are the Rams. They throw a screen pass to Cooper Kupp with seconds left in the game down 17 and he gets injured. Boggles the mind.

Read those here. All Yahoo! Community Guidelines also apply to Rivals. Rivals wants us to have this posted somewhere on our message boards that is clear and visible. Hence this thread.

I think everyone on here is doing a great job of following these guidelines, but just so that everyone knows what they are, etc.

Thank you all for making this a great place for people to talk about Stanford athletics! If anyone has any questions don’t hesitate to shoot me a private message. Also, don’t hesitate to file a report if something posted on the board troubles you. I do read those and take those seriously.

Read that here.

Shaw has an interesting way of eliminating criticism. He so demoralizes his fan base that guys like fborg throw their hands up and stop participating (although he does like some of my posts). Come on Matt its 11:30 on the east coast. You have had plenty of time to tell me that my eyes deceive me and that Robinson and Barrow are better than Kimble and Gerhart?

The Notre Dame win was even more counter-productive than I fathomed at the time. We are just a horrific team, but that one game could doom us for at least one and maybe two more years. And take it to the bank: Shaw/ Muir will throw out every excuse in the book to try and maintain the status quo: Portal, NIL, injuries, bad luck.

BTW: As bad as we are on both sides of the ball, there are probably better athletes overall on our defense. I don’t think we have a single skill player who would start for UCLA. Nobody has any muscle twitch.

Read that here.

Alrighty, time for the men's basketball recruiting notes thread for October. The September thread is here.

First off, Stanford had two 2024 4-star guards on junior official visits this weekend: Sir Mohammed and Gicarri Harris. Both were at the open practice yesterday. I saw them shooting around after the practice. I also saw Nazr Mohammed there, which was cool. They all seemed to be having a good time. I think that was part of why they had the open practice as well. Gave the recruits something to do.

Stanford also has one more junior official visitor scheduled for this month in 2024 4-star shooting guard Kon Knueppel. He is scheduled to visit October 28th before visiting Notre Dame on November 4th. I'll double check later this month to make sure that's still happening.

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As far as other 2024 guys who are key focuses, Stanford is really making an effort with 5-star big man Yves Missi who is at Prolific Prep. They've been in to see him a bunch of times.


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4-star small forward Liam McNeeley I need to check on, but he was like the first kid they offered in the class. Need to see if he has any visit plans lined up/how things are coming.

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Point guard Trent Perry is a guy who they really like as well. No star rating, but they think he's got a chance to be really good. I'll get my article on him out soon. But the staff really does like him and feels he's one of the better guards on the West Coast. Good they offered him as early as they did. He visited back in August.

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For the rest of the 2024 offers, click here. Other names they're on as well, but the ones above are the ones who I wanted to draw attention to/feel they are gaining most traction with at this time.


2025 offers, click here. Only four guys offered so far in that class.


As far as 2023 recruits are concerned, it really feels like Andrej Stojakovic or bust. That might be a bit harsh because they do have 5-star poitn guard Kanaan Carlyle committed, but you get the idea. They really need him. He's down to UCLA, Oregon, Stanford, and Texas and he has taken all four of his official visits to those schools. UCLA has been the consensus front runner for a while because of their assistant coach from Serbia who is best friends with his dad, but it's possible he doesn't end up there after all. Stanford has the advantage of being close to Jesuit where he plays high school in the Sacramento area and also the fact that Isa Silva is a Jesuit kid as well. Not to mention the academics, which I could see his dad Peja actually valuing.

So, I'm wiling to say that if he doesn't end up at UCLA, I think Stanford has the best chance to land him for those reasons. And then they really would like to have him, so they'll be offering him minutes and an important role.

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One other 2023 name I'll check on is Bron Roberts. 3-star power forward out of Utah. His recruitment remains pretty quiet as Stanford and Southern Utah remain his only two listed offers. But if he were to come Stanford, likely a developmental piece. So, it really is down to Stojakovic in terms of adding more pop to the 2023 class. Gonna be interesting to see if Stanford can pull him him.

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Alrighty, here is the women's basketball recruiting notes thread for October. The September thread is here.

First off, Stanford did have official visitors this past weekend as @Bobbk mentioned in the September thread. All three 2023 commits were there: Nunu Agara, Courtney Ogden, and Chloe Clardy as well as 2024 5-star guard Mikalya Blakes (Rutgers Prep, Somerset, NJ) and 2023 5-star point guard Hannah Hidalgo (Paul VI, Haddonfield, NJ). I checked to see if there was anyone more to the list than that, but that's the list. So everyone that Bob mentioned was the complete list.

2023 5-star point guard JuJu Watkins (Sierra Canyon, Los Angeles, CA) and 2023 5-star forward Delaney Thomas (St. John's College, Washington D.C.) have not committed anywhere and are still on the board. And then one other 2024 target I'll mention is 4-star point guard Shaye Ijiwoye (Desert Vista High School in Arizona) as they were recently in to see her.

So, that's the skinny on women's hoops recruiting right now. There are more targets they are on. I did mention those in the September thread as did Bob in case you want to brush up on those. So head there if you need a refresher. This is a bit more of a brief breakdown, but I just wanted to get this posted so that new news for this month now has a place to go!


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Read that here.

Read that here.

Read that here.

Read that here.

Read that here.

latest move by our AD/Ticket office to try getting butts in the now embarrasing VERY EMPTY seats. John Arrillaga rolling in his grave!

Press conference is here.

Injuries: Casey Filkins will be out for a significant portion of time if not the rest of the year; Ethan Bonner is doubtful, most likely out this week; David Bailey is probable going into today, but they'll see how things go at practice later on today; Aaron Armitage is a little bit further behind than Bailey, considered questionable but there's hope he could be back this week; Barrett Miller looked good at the end of the week, the hope is he'll be probable; Jacob Mangum-Farrar is questionable to probable, he played the end of the ASU game with a cast on his hand, so they'll see how that is going forward.

Little more on Filkins. I was told he'll need surgery. So that's the deal there. I don't know any more beyond that.

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At today’s Pac 12 meet. Hicks of Stanford the winner. How big of a win ? If you don’t count the top two runners Stanford still wins.

Read that here.

On my way up to Pac-12 media day. Stanford picked first in the preseason media poll. Not a surprise.

On my way up to Pac-12 men’s basketball media day. Stanford picked 5th in the media preseason poll. In case you are wondering, I was not the one who gave Stanford a first place vote. I threw them a bone by picking them to finish fourth, though.

Read that here. Someone else mentioned the kickoff time in an earlier thread, but for those that didn't see that, here you are.

Watching the Phillies Padres game. I haven’t seen a single African American in the stands. Seems odd/unfortunate to me.

I'll be there - anyone else going? Reply here or DM me!

Everyone concerned that the narrow victories over ASU and ND means we are stuck with Shaw for at least another year are over-reacting. The story of the season is still TBD. If we win 3 more games and make a bowl game, Shaw's job is secure. If we lose out and lose badly in most of the remaining games, the ND and ASU wins will be in the distant rear view mirror. It is how the season finishes that matters most. It could go either way. The defense has surprised us with much progress. We are all expecting a reversion vs DTR but who knows, maybe the offense will start scoring more TDs instead of field goals. The next 5 weeks will tell.

1. The plight of being a Stanford fan with a brain these days is seeing heart and head rent by a deeply unfortunate tug of war. We all love Stanford football and experiencing the first consecutive wins in exactly 400 days is a joyous occasion. I'm very happy for the players. Yet these two lucky, ugly wins against mediocre or worse teams and the very winnable games against Washington State, BYU, and Cal produce a very high likelihood there will be a clear narrative of improvement for the powers-that-be to hang complacency on if they want to, which they probably will. There's something poignant, albeit depressing, about this. Shaw has faced the hardest schedule in America thus far this season and now gets to rack up some wins against teams who beating doesn't suggest anything impressive, especially not the way Shaw beats them. Meanwhile, the fans with brains who know there's no truly competitive future with Shaw at the helm get put on the rack for questioning the Great Man.

2. This win was an extremely ugly win between bad teams. Somebody had to win but both teams played like the dregs of Power Five football they are. Both teams were penalized far above the national average (Stanford in the bottom 33rd percentile for penalty yards and Arizona State in the bottom 6th percentile). A game with two defenses that rank in the bottom 13th percentile of points per drive defenses nationally somehow managed to have nine punts and less than 30 total points (the median scoring offense, our non-world beating former offensive coordinator's Rice team, scores 30 a game alone). Each team had a fumble and an interception. Neither team grades in PFF's top 80 grades for pass rush and yet both teams gave up four sacks. U-G-L-Y. But I'm a Stanford fan and would rather my team win ugly than lose. We should make no mistake, though, in thinking this is a sign of progress for Stanford football. We eeked out an ugly victory at home against another bad team. Hence the pull between heart and head.

3. I will have none of it if Shaw tries to talk this up as a team win. It most definitely was not. We got outgained by over a yard per play and had almost identical points per drive against a bad team at home. We won for two reasons and two reasons only: Josh Karty and our edge defenders. I said last week we've become a kicker team. This is the second week in a row in which Karty led the C-House chant. That is deeply awesome for him but embarrassing for everybody else. He accounted for every single one of our points. That's never how you draw it up. But I can't say we won only because of him as the defense executed a bend but don't break game and saved the offense's bacon for the second week in a row. Both watching last night and dissecting play-by-play and PFF grades this morning it is crystal clear that Cooper, Herron and Keneley won this game along with Karty.

4. To be precise, we bent but didn't break for the last 40 minutes of the game. We were breaking badly in the first 20 minutes but then buckled down. I wouldn't be surprised if it tracked essentially exactly with the play when Ernest Cooper IV made his collegiate debut. What a revelation. You can just see the explosiveness. He and Bailey are a different breed than the rest of our players. I can't believe I'm saying this but there isn't a team in America that has better true freshmen edge players, and we haven't even seen Tafiti yet. Cooper only played 18 snaps and in that time had a stop on a reception for two yards with a hard stick (talk about making your presence known immediately in your college career), a tackle for loss on 2nd and 4, a sack on 1st and 10, and a tackle for loss on 1st and 10. He was the reason Arizona State had to punt twice, including a key fourth quarter drive, and made them work for yardage on a drive that ended in a missed field goal. What a debut. But it wasn't just him, the edge defenders were the best I've seen a Stanford front seven position group in I don't know how long. It may even be the best in 6+ years. Herron had a key sack (now #47 in America and #5 in the Pac-12 in sacks per game) and two key QB hurries. Keneley's big plays were the reason for the punt to start the fourth quarter. Even DiCosmo had 3-4 really good plays. I said during the week that Arizona State has an atrocious offensive line and it was time for Herron to hunt, and while the pitiful opponent had a lot to do with our pass rush, guys had to show up and for there to be pass rush aside from Herron is encouraging.

5. Big picture, by far the thing to be excited about in Stanford football is watching our front seven grow the rest of this season and the next couple of years. It's not just the edge guys but also Moi being great for a true freshman (ups and downs in this game but to bat a pass leading to an interception and to get two half tackles for loss is big-time for a true freshman). We may be seeing evidence for growth not just in the edge pass rush but in run defense, which has been on an upward trajectory over the last three weeks to newfound mediocrity. We shouldn't overstate this as yesterday's performance, even aided by four sacks, was more yards per carry than Oklahoma State, Utah, and USC gave up against Arizona State (but better than Northern Arizona, Eastern Michigan, and Washington), but along with pass rush it's a sign of some life. The front seven is eventually going to be really good if coaching doesn't hold it back.

6. I usually cover special teams later but it would be a crime to bury Karty! Tying an all-time Stanford single game record is of course a big deal. He's automatic. What a weapon, as Shaw says. Karty is now one of only three kickers in America with 12+ attempts and no misses. PFF hasn't updated the kicking grades yet but even before the game they had Karty the #6 kicker. In addition to the front seven maybe the other thing to watch for Stanford the rest of the season is a Groza Award campaign for Karty. I don't know if I'd vote for Karty ahead of NC State's Christopher Dunn but when you're talking about whether your guy is first, second, or third best in America that's where you want to be. Elsewhere on special teams, Sanborn had net punts of 44 (to the 15), 36 (to the 8), and 49 (to the 32). Some meat left on the bone but a nice game. Barrow had a nice return but is not yet a weapon (fifth of six qualifying Pac-12 returners). I do think he's better at it than Farrell and am happy about the switch. Kyu Kelly almost caused disaster with the muffed punt he caused, the type of play that could have cost the game (honestly one of several plays overall in which that could describe Kelly's day, although he also had multiple big-time plays).

Test drive them for 2023 for free!

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