Having loved a two-day Thanksgiving celebration within the California desert, Stanford returns to its house courtroom to host Portland in a nonconference sport Monday night time.
After opening with 5 straight at house, together with a 77-69 loss to Seattle in the latest outing in entrance of their followers, the Cardinal (6-1) thrilled their touring devoted within the Palm Springs suburb of Thousand Palms with a pair of wins Thursday and Friday.
Stanford rallied from a deficit within the ultimate seven minutes to overhaul Minnesota 72-68 on Thanksgiving, earlier than utilizing one of the vital exceptional finishes of the younger faculty basketball season — a high-arcing, buzzer-beating 3-pointer by Benny Gealer off a missed free throw — to stun Saint Louis 78-77 for the championship of the Acrisure Invitational.
Minutes later in a televised on-court interview, Gealer grounded himself from the heroic second and guaranteed there could be no letdown when the Cardinal returned house to face Portland (5-3).
“Nice staff win. We had been simply resilient. We did it as a staff,” Gealer stated. “One sport at a time, one follow at a time. Nice problem; we had been capable of combat by adversity. We acquired one other one at house developing (Monday).”
Portland shall be hoping to make it 4 straight wins over California competitors this season, having dispatched of UC Davis 67-63, Cal State Fullerton 103-85 and Lengthy Seaside State 93-73, the latter serving because the Pilots’ most up-to-date motion final Wednesday.
All three of these wins got here at house. Portland has performed only one street sport to date, and that did not go nicely, dropping 93-56 at Wyoming.
The Pilots have been led by a pair of worldwide freshmen — Joel Foxwell of Australia and Timo George of the Netherlands. Every scored 19 within the win over Lengthy Seaside State.
Foxwell leads all freshmen nationally with 6.1 assists per sport to go together with 15.6 factors and 5.4 rebounds, whereas capturing 49.4% total and 39.5% on 3-pointers.
The import has match completely into the model of play coach Shantay Legans has scripted for his new-look fifth version as he is tried to weave 9 new gamers into what’s left of final yr’s 12-20 roster.
“We wish to play quick and rating the ball,” Legans, who started his faculty enjoying profession within the San Francisco Bay Space at Cal, advised reporters just lately. “That is what everyone likes to see. It is leisure on the finish of the day.”
–Subject Stage Media
