FARM REPORT SPORTS
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BASKETBALL Playing with 'Whatever It Takes' SpiritREMEMBER THIS SCORE: Stanford 85, Arizona 76. As of February 7, the men's basketball team was 20-1, ranked No. 2 in the country, and beating its opponents by an average of 21.3 points per game. But no victory loomed larger than the win over the Wildcats in Tucson, Ariz., on January 5. If the Cardinal shakes off the subpar performances of its last two NCAA tournament appearances and advances to the Final Four, the team may look back at that game as a key moment in a successful season. Arizona, loaded with talent and picked by some sportswriters as the preseason favorite to win the national championship, seldom loses at McKale Center. Stanford has won there just once since 1984. This time, the Cardinal built a double-digit lead early in the second half and was never seriously threatened, rebuffing every potential Arizona comeback. That victory, as well as a December 21 win over then No. 1 Duke, 84-83, bolstered the Cardinal's chances for a high seed as the team enters March Madness. It also demonstrated a quality that some feared might be missing when Mark Madsen graduated last spring -- leadership. Senior co-captains Ryan Mendez and Jason Collins have taken over Madsen's role as squad leaders. The two have been instrumental in getting the players to function as a team, according to head coach Mike Montgomery. "They've really made a conscious effort to step up and talk to the other kids about what we need to be doing," he says. This year's group might be quieter and less demonstrative than past teams, but they have developed into a strong unit, playing with confidence and determination. "The game against Arizona was obviously a big game, and it was apparent that our players were getting themselves ready to compete," Montgomery says. "It's different than in previous years, because we don't have a lot of running around and talking [to fire up their teammates]. These guys get themselves ready." This team also has shown an ability to adapt to different styles of play, an important asset come tournament time. In a January 20 game against New Mexico, for example, the Cardinal struggled in the first half when the speedy Lobos guards repeatedly penetrated Stanford's man-to-man defense and set up teammates to score inside. Montgomery switched to a zone defense late in the half, and the Cardinal scored the next 13 points. They stuck with the zone in the second half and won in a romp, 75-44. That sort of "whatever it takes" spirit was missing during the second-round loss to North Carolina in the NCAAs last March, says Mendez. The players second-guessed their performance and each seemed to think that, given a chance, he could have changed the outcome. "It was, 'I need the ball more. I need to shoot more,'" Mendez recalls. "It was definitely, 'Me, me, me.'" Although several games have featured multiple players scoring 15 or more points, the offensive leader clearly is sophomore Casey Jacobsen. He leads the team in scoring and is a devastating perimeter shooter, making about 45 percent of his shots from three-point range, including a few 30-footers. In the Duke game, Jacobsen scored a career-high 26 points, including the winning shot with 3.6 seconds remaining. "He's playing fabulous basketball," Montgomery says. Point guard Mike McDonald also has been a steadying influence this season. He was averaging 5 assists and just 1.5 turnovers after the team's first 21 games and arriving at better decisions as a playmaker, according to Montgomery. "We've won two conference championships in a row, and we have our third in our sights. That is really something special," Montgomery said as the Cardinal headed into February. The coach acknowledges, though, that the real prize is the NCAA tournament, which begins on March 15. After disappointing exits in the first and second rounds the last two years, Stanford is hoping that a combination of talent, timing and toughness will lead them back to the Final Four. |
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BASEBALL The Cardinal's Winningest CoachALL THE GOOD-NATURED JABS about his being the old guy on the panel left baseball head coach Mark Marquess feeling "a little shook up." But that didn't stop the 53-year-old former first baseman from pulling out his granny glasses -- to admiring chuckles -- to read stats off his note cards as he answered questions from sportswriters at the annual Bay Area College Baseball Media Day, in January. Standing at an improvised podium in the Adventure Room of San Francisco's Planet Hollywood, where he had to compete with framed action shots of Sylvester Stallone and Tom Selleck, Marquess, '69, was the center of attention. "We're very young but talented," he told reporters about this year's team. "If we can keep our heads above water, we can become a pretty good team toward the second half of the season." If anyone can rebound from last season's loss of six starting position players and three starting pitchers, it's Marquess, the winningest coach in Stanford history. At the beginning of his 25th season with the Cardinal, he was only five victories short of 1,000 career wins. Three-time NCAA Coach of the Year and eight-time Pac-10 Coach of the Year, he has taken Stanford to two NCAA titles and 10 College World Series appearances. Marquess played minor-league ball with the Chicago White Sox and he coached the U.S. team to its first gold medal in baseball at the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. But when he talks about how his freshmen may perform, it's likely that he's drawing on his own undergraduate experience on the Farm, when he was a three-year starter at first base and also played three years of football. "You never know with freshmen how quickly they're going to make the transition," he told a reporter. "We've got a couple, like Carlos Quentin, who are going to be outstanding college players, but I'm not sure they're going to be outstanding as freshmen. Will they hit 10 home runs? Will they hit 15? I don't know." Quentin's response? Two days later, the powerful outfielder slammed a three-run homer off the top of the scoreboard in his first collegiate at-bat to give Stanford an 11-9 victory over Fresno State in the second game of the season. Marquess may want to retire the bifocals and hold onto his cap for the ride to come. |
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FACILITIES Fields of Dreams for 21st-Century CompetitionsFROM THE HEART-STOPPING edge of the diving platform suspended 10 meters above the pool, you can see 15 meters straight down, all the way to the bottom. The gin-clear water, which could have been bottled in the Florida Keys, takes your breath away. But the aesthetics may be lost on a diver who is spinning head over heels and trying to gauge when to come out of a tuck to make a clean entry. So coach Rick Schavone will flick the switch on an agitator nozzle, shooting a fine jet spray across the pool to make the surface more visible. Or perhaps a diver is standing on tiptoe on the edge of the 7.5-meter platform, about to try a back two-and-one-half tuck for the first time from that height. To provide a soft-water landing, Schavone can activate sparger strips on the pool floor that cough up huge burps of frothy air to the surface. Agitators and spargers are two of the high-tech gizmos that make the Avery Aquatic Center -- renovated over the past year at a cost of $15.8 million -- the hot new athletic facility on a campus where sports stadiums and playing fields are continually being upgraded and outfitted in distinctive shades of green, terra-cotta, cream and white. At Avery, the biggest and possibly glitziest collegiate aquatics venue in the nation, swimmers take aim at record-breaking times in fast pools with slick water, thanks to a new gutter system that smoothes out wakes and virtually eliminates interfering waves. Recently installed wheelchair elevators rotate out over the water to lower disabled swimmers into the pools, and new centrifugal swimsuit dryers in the varsity locker rooms spin at slac-like speeds. Two managers keep watch on pool chemicals and chlorine levels and staff in the mechanical room keep the pumps humming. There's even a floating bulkhead that arcs across the pool and slides up and down to create 25-meter or 50-meter lanes -- or any length in between. Swimmers are guided by black-tile lane lines when they race the length of the pool and follow royal blue markers when they swim across the width. "It's kind of like laying out volleyball lines on a basketball court," says Dave Schinski, director of athletic facilities. "Here the water polo team plays on the same court as the varsity swimmers." Schinski is the guy who knows what kind of paint (tnemic) goes on the stair rails and who keeps track of the water temperature in the diving wells (85 degrees). In the athletics department's 100-acre manicured fiefdom bordered by Campus Drive, El Camino, Galvez and Serra, he's the one responsible for overseeing the installation of big-league seats at Sunken Diamond and state-of-the-art scoreboards at Taube Family Tennis Stadium. In late January, varsity players and tradesmen worked side by side, preparing for opening days. On one side of a temporary green wooden fence at Avery, swimmers dug out laps; on the other side, tile setters finished grouting the bottom of another pool that was scheduled for a March water polo competition. At Sunken Diamond, sprinklers watered the apple-green grass while three players shagged flies and 18 workers in yellow and white hard hats put the final touches on an upgraded press box and new dugouts in preparation for the February 9 home opener against Florida State. On a nearby softball field, backhoes created a bermed mound out of dirt left over from the pool digs, readying it for the first game of women's fast pitch on February 3. And those are just the most visible works in progress. As he looks three to five years down the track, Schinski sees four big capital projects still to come: renovations to Maples Pavilion, the golf course and Stanford Stadium, plus a new student recreational center. A feasibility study of Maples suggests that 400 new seats can be added during the next two years for between $15 and $20 million, but changes to the stadium could come with a considerably higher price tag -- up to $1,000 per square foot. Four architectural firms recently submitted proposals ranging from constructing a new stadium on a different site to a slight massage of access to the concession stands. Then there's the interest of the Bay Area Sports Organizing Committee, which is trying to bring the 2012 Summer Olympics to San Francisco. The group wants Stanford to host the opening and closing ceremonies, a portion of the athletes' village and five Olympic events: badminton, softball, water polo, track and field and the modern pentathlon. The organizers, Schinski says, "look at our dedicated football practice fields and see equestrian events and archery matches, so we have to consider all that in our plans. But mostly, we have to find ways to keep playing while we build." |
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WRESTLING Selby Double-Majors in Academics, AthleticsLAST YEAR Brad Selby seemed to be living out a college football player's dream. He had a full scholarship and belonged to a top-25 Stanford squad that reached the Rose Bowl for the first time in 28 years. But for Selby, '01, it was a season of crisis. After redshirting his first year and playing in just a handful of games during the 1999 season, Selby was discouraged by his slow development. And he realized that his demanding practice schedule reduced the time he could devote to schoolwork. "I just knew I wasn't doing what I wanted," he recalls. So Selby quit football, relinquishing a scholarship worth more than $30,000 annually. And, most wrenching, he told his father--a devoted Stanford fan--that he wasn't going to play again. But, still eager for a physical outlet, Selby found a spot in an unsung corner of the athletic world--the wrestling team. Selby, a 285-pound, 6-foot-4-inch bear of a man, wasn't immune to the pressures facing athletes hailed as stars in high school but considered middle-of-the-pack in college. "Brad Selby, as big and tough as he is, is sort of a softie on the inside," says Chris Horpel, '74, who has coached Stanford's wrestling team for 22 years. That introspective side was particularly evident when Selby flew to Paradise Valley, Ariz., to tell his father that he was giving up football. As the two men sat in the living room, Selby outlined his new goals--making Phi Beta Kappa, studying abroad, completing an honors thesis, competing for postgraduate scholarships. The discussion was clearly painful, but Selby says his father has now come around. This spring Selby, a double-major in English and art history, will attend Stanford's program in Oxford. He then plans to use an undergraduate research grant to stay in Europe over the summer and do research. Although Selby says he was a good student in high school, he admits that his passion for scholarship is a recent development. "Something happened after I came to Stanford," he says. That "something" was the teaching of professors such as Jody Maxmin in art history. "I just caught fire." Selby, who has been elected captain, is the leader of a very young team. Of the 29 men listed on the roster, 15 are true or redshirt freshmen, competing for the first time. Last year the team finished 7th in the Pac-10, with one individual weight-class champion, and qualified two wrestlers for the NCAAs. This year, Horpel says, the inexperienced squad is not a contender for a conference title, but he hopes to qualify as many wrestlers as possible for the mid-March NCAAs. Brad Selby could be one of them. |
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Sports Notebook For Gould
and Brennan, a Little Love
On a Fast-Pitch Track for the
Championship
Nelsen Heads the
Class
For Men's Soccer Coach, a Farm
Farewell [ Top ] |