I was at the game and, despite the low attendance (maybe 300-400) and bizarre choice to schedule a 1PM Monday opener, it was a fun way to kick off the MBB season provide a palate cleanser from Saturday.

Some observations:

Maples Celebrities in attendance
(in no particular order):
- Joe Lacob
- Tony Joseph
- Bernard Muir
- Anurag

The student turnout was beyond pathetic. Maybe 40-50 students. That said, most probably have class Monday and also, with a roster full of transfers, perhaps not as much allegiance to certain players in the student body.

As for the game, and new faces:

Maxime looked solid. I would've liked to see him play inside a bit more as he floated out and shot some corner threes but he's a known quantity and will be on the court a ton this season (33 minutes today which is a lot for a center!)

Sellers looked awesome, great length and defensive presence, quick hands, good shooting and some serious bounce and ability to dunk/finish. Stud.

Blakes is a dog on defense. It is so refreshing to watch the other team struggle to bring the ball up the court as we hound the primary ball handler. He will be important this season. He isn't a great ball handler himself and appears to have no left, but he's fast and aggressive and will be hard to keep off of the court.

<sobering note: Sellers and Blakes were fringe rotation guys for USC or Duke and are major pieces to this roster. Our talent level is low for the ACC>

Gealer got hot and his ability to knock down open threes will be important this season. I do think that Gealer/Blakes are susceptible to ball pressure and disruptive defenders. We are a bit lacking in perimeter ball handlers who can make guys pay for pressure.

Cammann was surprisingly solid and will be a good roster piece this season. I would be surprised if he continues to start over Okpara but expect them to have equal minutes and serve as a PF platoon while spelling Raynaud when needed. Okpara looks the part and plays physical.

Agarwal looks pretty good. He missed all of his 3s but they looked good coming off of a confident stroke. He is long and his defense and perimeter play were both passable. I was happy to see it after his surprise redshirt season.

Batson Jr looked solid in his 10 minutes racking up 3 steals. He's impressive for a frosh.

Saran was good at UCI so it was surprising to see him buried on the bench. He has a couple more years to develop.

Toure looked fine. Don't expect to see him much this season but he should be able to develop nicely while serving as our 4th big. Thompson isn't good and will never be a rotation piece.

Overall, the defensive pressure and intensity was awesome and led to lots of easy buckets. The team hit their FTs and protected the ball.

The team looked better than expected and should be competitive in most games this year. Don't get your hopes up too much, as the overall talent level isn't terribly high, but it looks like Smith and his staff know what they're doing and likely will have a better team than last season's (with much less raw talent).

Arrow up!

Read that here.

Read that here.

Preview is here.

Preview is here.

1. The inescapable bottom line for Stanford football is that we are deep into the spiral of a catastrophic system-wide failure that requires fundamentally changing the way we operate. We can debate the details of what needs changing most urgently - priorities and sequencing - but the fact that we have catastrophically and comprehensively failed seems undeniable. Nobody living on Planet Earth can think anything is going right in the Taylor era. We keep plumbing depths I don't think anybody thought possible, now #115 in Sagarin. When @BigJohn043 shared computer algorithm data going all the way back to 1960, the worst Stanford teams in history were the winless 1960 team at #109 and the 1983 and 2006 teams at #104. There has never been a time in history in which there were more teams better than Stanford than is the case right now. Going back to 1960, our worst two year stretches were being #109 and #83 in 1960-1961 and being #89 and #87 in Shaw's last two years in 2021-2022. Now in Taylor's first two years we have set a new unequivocal low at #101 and #115. It seemed a given after last year that we had found bottom and could embark on the more rewarding process of slowly building. Instead, we keep getting worse and it's unclear when we will hit rock bottom considering that the performance keeps declining and recruiting is struggling enough that it appears likely the roster will be even less talented next year than it is this year.

2. Even by our standards, yesterday was heinous, the worst game of our season in terms of scoring margin relative to opponent. [Our games this year have been befitting the #91, #65, #27, #115, #158, #156, #162, #116, and #201 teams in the nation.] On some level, this is unsurprising given that we have been at a consistently abysmal level for over a month and were playing a 9am body clock game across the country, a circumstance that empirically essentially guarantees relatively poor performance for Stanford. Still, when you are already playing like the worst team in Stanford history fans could be forgiven for thinking it couldn't get worse. Nope. It got worse. This raises the specter of self-belief being completely destroyed, morale being in the toilet, and the dreaded situation of a team giving up on themselves/each other/the coaches. Taylor claims he didn't see that yesterday, but losing by 31 to a team as mediocre as NC State raises the question. #91 Wake Forest, #106 Northern Illinois, and #144 Louisiana Tech kept it within 10 against these guys and even #149 Western Carolina was only 17 back. I don't think you can be trying and lose to NC State by 31. This team is not only lost but deeply depressed. It's becoming clear our staff doesn't have a clue how to turn this around.

3. The argument we hear from some is that it needs to be a turnaround via the transfer portal and that it is focusing on the wrong thing to call for a change in coaching; others go further and argue our success is impossible. What these points of view miss is that more than one thing can be holding us back and until we have credible coaching there is no way to know what the talent on the roster can do. When the program reaches depths like this it is hard to argue anything isn't a problem and I find it incredible to hear arguments the coaching isn't a problem. I fully understand the headwinds we face but the idea this roster is #115 talent bad does not hold water. By recruiting rankings we are top 50. We will likely be top 50 in terms of how many players on the 2024 roster play in the NFL. By objective measures of returning production we were top five. I think people who question whether any coach could do better do not understand how bad #115 is. Honestly, it shouldn't come as a complete shock to see this staff fail. We have a head coach who had never been a major college football head coach a day in his life, a defensive coordinator who had never been a defensive coordinator a day in his life, and an entire offensive staff that had combined for zero days as major college football position coaches. In retrospect it seems we (yes, including me) may have deluded ourselves into thinking this was a serious staff.

4. It remains to be seen whether this offseason sees self-reflection and changes that reflect seriousness of purpose as a program but anything short of fundamental change should raise doubts. I do not think it would be excessive or premature to replace the athletic director and entire football coaching staff, double the number of incoming transfers, and pursue a revenue sharing model in line with the House settlement back pay formula. I do think it is unlikely we see all of that, making the debates about priorities and sequencing highly salient. I also think that this catastrophic failure coming at an inflection point for the sport on the cusp of revenue sharing raises questions about how much change and how many financial sacrifices Stanford can accept at once. This is an uncertain, depressing time. But Stanford has to do something and something fundamental. They won't deserve even the few hundred fans they do have if this off-season is another one of just letting Taylor pursue his theory of the case.

Was he hurt? I’m at the game and he looks like he really belongs in the starting lineup. Really active defense and good spacing on offense. He’s talking to players and refs like he’s a Senior who’s been around. A real ‘presence’ about him. There are other positive roster developments hinted at at this early stage but they are transfers (or Gealer who showed something last year). Cammann is really surprising me.

Does anyone know when they’ll announce kickoff time for big game?

Trying to plan an overseas trip with our daughter around it. Thanks!

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Not sure if any of you saw this, but Bruce Arians went on a popular sports podcast, Pardon My Take, and said that if he were to create a perfect quarterback out of Brady, Peyton, Roelisberger, etc. it would simply just be Andrew Luck.

Doesn't take much to get me started on the topic of 12.

It has been over 5 years since Luck retired and I can't say it still doesn't pop into my brain every now and then. Wondering what he would have accomplished the last 5 years, writing records, amassing awards and championships.

We are obviously biased being hard-core Stanford fans but he certainly is one of the most unique athletes of all time. Having the ability to be perhaps the best player at the most important position in American sports, and instead opting to pursue a more ordinary life.

I remember David Shaw being interviewed on SportsCenter that night. He sounded extremely sad that he won't get to watch Andrew on Sundays anymore, but also not totally surprised. Knowing Andrew so well he knew that Andrew marches to the beat of his own drum.

I wasnt participating on this board back in August of 2019. It must have been a wild night.

Picturing Luck in 2024's NFL is a bit difficult. The NFL game has changed (deteriorated) a lot since 2019 in my opinion -- the amount of penalties, kickoff formats, longer seasons, quality of play, etc. -- maybe he got out at a good time

Regardless, I do miss watching him play. I became a die-hard Colts fan, often streaming out-of-network FOX 10am PT games on Sundays.

It was one of those moments where years later I can still remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the news. I was up in Lake Tahoe with friends and someone yelled while I was in the kitchen "Yo! Andrew Luck just retired". I watched his press conference live and was shell shocked the rest of the night.

Has your guys impression of his retirement changed over they years? That Seth Wickersham article was quite revealing.

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

September thread is here. I’ll add a breakdown in here when I can, but I at least wanted to get the thread created.

Did Rintaro play? Who looked good?

This argument, repeated over and over on the board, is horse manure.

Do you think Michigan doesn't care enough or won't pay a competitive salary?

They lost by 21 to Oregon. They lost by 10 to Washington. Currently 10th in the B1G.

Stanford doesn't do this because it is easy.

In case you are like me and just sort of lumped SMU into G5 obscurity with the likes of Memphis and Houston, they are currently one of only four FBS teams ranked in the Top 15 in both offensive and defensive efficiency. They had 52 pts against Tulsa at halftime yesterday, a feat they also accomplished against Houston last year. They don't have that marquee win recently (though they did come close against national runner up TCU last season), but appear to be on the rise. If their recruiting gets a bump by virtue of joining the ACC, I wouldn't be surprised to see them in the ACCCG soon.

Or whatever the equivalent in College Football program stewardship is...

This is an embarrassment to the University. Fire him now. Meet him on the tarmac.

Let the next person fix football.

Read and watch that here.

Read and watch that here.

NC State is only a 9.5 point favorite over Stanford.

Stanford is 2-5-1 ATS this season, meaning they in general underperform their expectations.

LAY the 9..5 and you can at least make money off Stanford losing. If Stanford beats the spread, you at least get some satisfaction that they were competitive against a team that beat Cal.

FWIW, Stanford was 5-7 ATS in 2023.

I talked to an individual who has some intel on how the basketball team is looking. Just some nuggets:

Anthony Batson, Jr. is very athletic. That’s an exciting thing he brings.

Oziah Sellers can really shoot. That’s standing out in practice. Like a legit 3-point threat.

Chisom Okpara looks like the real deal. Could be a 15+ points per game kinda dude.

Physicality is going to be a main point of emphasis for this year’s team. Kyle Smith felt like the key to beating Stanford last year was just being more physical than them. The individual I talked to agreed that Spencer Jones brought that physicality and toughness, but alas, he was hurt too much. They also felt Brandon Angel was the most complete player on the team last season. Just in terms of all-around play. Too bad he left for Oregon, but he had his reasons. I think he just wanted a change of scenery. Can’t blame him.

That’s about it. But still kinda interesting to get their insights nonetheless.

I was thinking it would be interesting to try to get a picture on who these last few wild years of college football (transfer portal, NIL, realignment) have been good to and who they have been bad to. There are lots of ways to look at this but the one that pops in my mind as interesting for the moment is to compare on-paper talent from before things really took off and now. Different baselines would lead to different results and other analyses may be interested in looking at on-field results rather than on-paper talent, but at least for my purposes for now I was interested in this. Power Four teams ranked in terms of +/- placements in the 2021 vs. 2024 247 team talent composite rankings:

1. Colorado (+32)
2. SMU (+30)
3. Louisville (+23)
4. Kansas (+22)
5. Syracuse (+18)
6. Purdue (+16)
7. Arizona State (+13)
8. Missouri (+12)
8. Cincinnati (+12)
10. Vanderbilt (+10)
11. Texas Tech (+7)
12. Kansas State (+6)
13. Minnesota (+5)
14. Penn State (+4)
14. Florida State (+4)
14. TCU (+4)
17. UCF (+3)
17. Pitt (+3)
19. Texas (+2)
19. Oklahoma (+2)
19. Florida (+2)
19. Tennessee (+2)
19. Ole Miss (+2)
19. Kentucky (+2)
25. Oregon (+1)
25. Nebraska (+1)
25. Wisconsin (+1)
25. Virginia (+1)
25. Wake Forest (+1)
30. Alabama (even)
30. Georgia (even)
30. Ohio State (even)
30. Clemson (even)
30. Notre Dame (even)
30. Auburn (even)
30. South Carolina (even)
30. Utah (even)
30. Cal (even)
30. Virginia Tech (even)
40. LSU (-1)
40. Arkansas (-1)
40. Iowa (-1)
40. Rutgers (-1)
44. Miami (-2)
44. UCLA (-2)
44. BYU (-2)
47. Texas A&M (-3)
47. Michigan (-3)
47. NC State (-3)
47. Baylor (-3)
51. USC (-4)
52. Mississippi State (-5)
52. Arizona (-5)
54. North Carolina (-6)
54. Northwestern (-6)
54. Illinois (-6)
54. Duke (-6)
58. Michigan State (-7)
58. Iowa State (-7)
60. West Virginia (-10)
61. Houston (-11)
62. Oklahoma State (-13)
63. Washington (-15)
64. Georgia Tech (-16)
64. Maryland (-16)
64. Boston College (-16)
67. Indiana (-18)
68. Stanford (-19)

No longer Power Four (or do they count for now?):

Washington State (-2 but already a cellar talent level))
Oregon State (-19)

This does not precisely measure who is up/down due to transfer portal, NIL, and realignment. As we know very well from the David Shaw Experience, there are other factors - like an imploding program - that can impact this. Some programs may be up/down due to the three environmental factors I mentioned but also due to other rhythms in their programs or even just variance. Nonetheless, I think it's interesting to get a picture on whose talent is most/least changed from a few years ago.

Caveat aside, the above does provide a bit of a picture. Everybody knows Colorado, SMU, Louisville, and Kansas have been the biggest winners nationally of the last few years. Interesting for us to see Syracuse as a third ACC team near the top of the mover's list. On the other side of the spectrum, nobody has experienced a bigger negative shock than us the last few years and only a handful are even in the vicinity.

In terms of the conference we're joining, seven teams are on the positive side of the ledger, three are in the middle (as is Notre Dame), and seven are on the negative side of the ledger (including us). Some up, some down, no clear bonus or detriment to the ACC relative to the rest of the power conferences when it comes to on-paper talent shifts the last few years. But again, the ACC does have a striking concentration of the very most benefited teams. It strikes me that the SMU, Louisville, Syracuse trio's gains are a significant thing in the ACC landscape. And on the flip side Stanford, Boston College, and Georgia Tech make a striking concentration of the most disadvantaged teams. I don't know what to make of these polarities.

Read and watch that here.