The most important positive development for Stanford on the court is the improving play of Robert Cartwright. He's becoming more comfortable within the offense and what Haase is asking him to do. He's starting to look like the guard people were excited to see before his injury. Considering next season he will be the only point guard with any experience on the team it's critical that for the rest of this season his development continues to be positive and he stays healthy.
Robert Cartwright on the fast start, which included a 20-3 lead in the first half: Our defense. We held to very few points for quite a few possessions to start the game. One of our statistics are called turkeys and that's three defensive stops in a row. We had seven in the first half. When we're able to play defense like that and lock in we're going to be able to be in a lot of games and beat teams.
Is this the best you've (Reid Travis) played with Mike (Humphrey) on the court in a while? Yeah, I feel like me and Mike compliment each other really well. The way he rebounds the ball definitely helps me, especially on defense. His communication, the way we can switch with bigs, we can double team, it's definitely great to have Mike playing well with me on the court at the same time.
Cartwright on his improving three-point shooting (he finished 5-for-7 and had 21 points): It's a long time coming. I've been trying to work on it a lot in practice and get my habits right. Keep working on my shot every day and hopefully have similar performances like this one behind the arc in the future. It was a credit to my teammates. We did a good job defensively and that's what really led to our offense. We were able to get stops and get in transition, move the ball and get in a better pace.
Cartwright on building offensive performance on strong showing against UCLA, especially in the second half: We feel like we're trying to turn a corner as a team. Obviously after the Arizona schools we really needed to evaluate ourselves. We thought that even though the results in the LA games weren't exactly what we wanted them to be, we're starting to turn the corner a little bit. Our defense is getting better and our pace on offense is getting better. Hopefully we can keep knocking shots down like we did tonight.
Jerod Haase
I'm not surprised that we're making progress. The losses, especially the LA trip we were making progress down there. We played a couple good teams on their home courts and certainly didn't have all the pieces together and playing on all cylinders. Today I think we need to be cautiously optimistic. We played well, we made some shots and really had energy defensively. We need to understand we need to continue -- we made a step forward today. I really think we're building this thing brick by brick and we are making progress. Today was a really good step forward but it wasn't seven steps forward. We understand that.
Feeling of winning first conference game: Well, we're never going to get to our second conference unless we get the first one. So it does feel good to get the first one crossed off. Certainly a sense of relief to a certain extent but also an understanding that with Thursday-Saturday games there's not a whole lot of time to bask in the glory. It's time to get back to work.
Evaluate interior play that finished plus-26 in the paint against Wash. St.: I liked our ability to get the ball inside early. At times we strayed away from that just a bit. But our game plan really every game is to attack inside first. I thought Reid did a nice job off the bounce early on. We got the bigs some touches and the guards did some nice things on dribble penetration as well. That needs to be our mindset always is to attack inside out.
On Cartwright's play and spirit on the court: When he has a dream tonight and pretty much every night probably the rest of the season all he is going to hear is a little voice inside his head saying, 'Manage the team. Manage the game.' That's all I've told him. I've probably said it about 5,000 times this week. And moving forward I'm probably going to say it about 5,000 times every game. The shots, the assists -- that's all going to come. It's all going to be there. He's a very capable, very confident player. But as long as he can lose himself in the game by worrying more about making sure we're in the proper spots offensively, flowing from secondary into our motion offense, what we're doing late clock, managing those things -- we still have a ways to go -- but I think his mind right now really is focused on managing the team. Because of that he's not getting in his own way. He's shooting the basketball and making plays ... it's kind of simplifying things. He's a really done a nice job managing the team and there's been progress over the past couple games. We're going to try to make sure that continues.
Best defensive performance in a while? The seven turkeys is a good start. That's a way to define getting stops. I really thought we were committed to stopping dribble penetration. There were some lapses in the second half of challenging the three-point shot. I think the guys were really committed to the game plan. I talked about Robert leading the team and committing to the plan that we have in place. I think the team as a whole understood the game plan and executed it. If we go back to the UCLA game I thought we really did a nice job of executing the game plan, as well. Now we have multiple games of doing that and hopefully that's a trend moving forward.
Robert Cartwright on the fast start, which included a 20-3 lead in the first half: Our defense. We held to very few points for quite a few possessions to start the game. One of our statistics are called turkeys and that's three defensive stops in a row. We had seven in the first half. When we're able to play defense like that and lock in we're going to be able to be in a lot of games and beat teams.
Is this the best you've (Reid Travis) played with Mike (Humphrey) on the court in a while? Yeah, I feel like me and Mike compliment each other really well. The way he rebounds the ball definitely helps me, especially on defense. His communication, the way we can switch with bigs, we can double team, it's definitely great to have Mike playing well with me on the court at the same time.
Cartwright on his improving three-point shooting (he finished 5-for-7 and had 21 points): It's a long time coming. I've been trying to work on it a lot in practice and get my habits right. Keep working on my shot every day and hopefully have similar performances like this one behind the arc in the future. It was a credit to my teammates. We did a good job defensively and that's what really led to our offense. We were able to get stops and get in transition, move the ball and get in a better pace.
Cartwright on building offensive performance on strong showing against UCLA, especially in the second half: We feel like we're trying to turn a corner as a team. Obviously after the Arizona schools we really needed to evaluate ourselves. We thought that even though the results in the LA games weren't exactly what we wanted them to be, we're starting to turn the corner a little bit. Our defense is getting better and our pace on offense is getting better. Hopefully we can keep knocking shots down like we did tonight.
Jerod Haase
I'm not surprised that we're making progress. The losses, especially the LA trip we were making progress down there. We played a couple good teams on their home courts and certainly didn't have all the pieces together and playing on all cylinders. Today I think we need to be cautiously optimistic. We played well, we made some shots and really had energy defensively. We need to understand we need to continue -- we made a step forward today. I really think we're building this thing brick by brick and we are making progress. Today was a really good step forward but it wasn't seven steps forward. We understand that.
Feeling of winning first conference game: Well, we're never going to get to our second conference unless we get the first one. So it does feel good to get the first one crossed off. Certainly a sense of relief to a certain extent but also an understanding that with Thursday-Saturday games there's not a whole lot of time to bask in the glory. It's time to get back to work.
Evaluate interior play that finished plus-26 in the paint against Wash. St.: I liked our ability to get the ball inside early. At times we strayed away from that just a bit. But our game plan really every game is to attack inside first. I thought Reid did a nice job off the bounce early on. We got the bigs some touches and the guards did some nice things on dribble penetration as well. That needs to be our mindset always is to attack inside out.
On Cartwright's play and spirit on the court: When he has a dream tonight and pretty much every night probably the rest of the season all he is going to hear is a little voice inside his head saying, 'Manage the team. Manage the game.' That's all I've told him. I've probably said it about 5,000 times this week. And moving forward I'm probably going to say it about 5,000 times every game. The shots, the assists -- that's all going to come. It's all going to be there. He's a very capable, very confident player. But as long as he can lose himself in the game by worrying more about making sure we're in the proper spots offensively, flowing from secondary into our motion offense, what we're doing late clock, managing those things -- we still have a ways to go -- but I think his mind right now really is focused on managing the team. Because of that he's not getting in his own way. He's shooting the basketball and making plays ... it's kind of simplifying things. He's a really done a nice job managing the team and there's been progress over the past couple games. We're going to try to make sure that continues.
Best defensive performance in a while? The seven turkeys is a good start. That's a way to define getting stops. I really thought we were committed to stopping dribble penetration. There were some lapses in the second half of challenging the three-point shot. I think the guys were really committed to the game plan. I talked about Robert leading the team and committing to the plan that we have in place. I think the team as a whole understood the game plan and executed it. If we go back to the UCLA game I thought we really did a nice job of executing the game plan, as well. Now we have multiple games of doing that and hopefully that's a trend moving forward.
