I watched yesterday's game with great resignation that the talent differential between Arizona and everyone else in the P12 is extremely wide (I felt the same way in the Baylor game).
The question I asked was "how did they get here"? Last year we beat them twice. Granted it was with a better team but we aren't THAT much worse this year.
Looking at their lineup, it became clear: international pipeline.
Tubelis - Lithuania
Koloko - Cameroon
Mathurin - Canada
Kriisa - Norway
Ballo - Mali - transfer from Gonzaga
Larsson - Sweden - transfer from Utah
Without those guys, AZ is a few guys who may or may not even start for our team. They lost very good U.S. raised players Barcello and Akinjo to transfer portal in the last couple of year (probably more I'm forgetting). I don't know if they keep this up with Lloyd at the helm though a couple were added this year via transfer portal.
This has actually been a reasonable strength of the Haase regime (Da Silva, Kisunas, White, Reynaud). But nothing like AZ. It seems to me like Stanford should be able to compete well with the likes of these other schools in that the international academic brand is strong. Is this something we double down on, as Arizona and some other strong college programs have?
The question I asked was "how did they get here"? Last year we beat them twice. Granted it was with a better team but we aren't THAT much worse this year.
Looking at their lineup, it became clear: international pipeline.
Tubelis - Lithuania
Koloko - Cameroon
Mathurin - Canada
Kriisa - Norway
Ballo - Mali - transfer from Gonzaga
Larsson - Sweden - transfer from Utah
Without those guys, AZ is a few guys who may or may not even start for our team. They lost very good U.S. raised players Barcello and Akinjo to transfer portal in the last couple of year (probably more I'm forgetting). I don't know if they keep this up with Lloyd at the helm though a couple were added this year via transfer portal.
This has actually been a reasonable strength of the Haase regime (Da Silva, Kisunas, White, Reynaud). But nothing like AZ. It seems to me like Stanford should be able to compete well with the likes of these other schools in that the international academic brand is strong. Is this something we double down on, as Arizona and some other strong college programs have?
