| | By Andy Katz
ESPN.com
STANFORD, Calif. -- Loved Mark Madsen's competitive spirit. Can't mimic his congeniality. Even his locker room influence at Stanford will be hard to duplicate.
Hey, in less than two weeks with the Lakers, he's already won over Shaq, earning his trust to help him pick up a Rolex for each team member last week.
But Stanford can replace his athleticism in trying to defend and score against faster frontcourt players (see: Arizona and North Carolina in second round NCAA loss).
|  | | The Cardinal will need a healthy Jason Collins under the boards this season. |
Take a look at the Madsen-less Cardinal and this is what's obvious: they're bigger, faster to the ball, deeper and thicker then they've ever been under coach Mike Montgomery.
"You could say that," Montgomery said during ESPN.com's preseason tour Sunday. "But at times we'll be bigger. It'll be a combination."
Sometimes both.
To stay at the top of college basketball, athleticism has become a must. What does that mean for Stanford?
The Cardinal will run, press and score off its defense more and actually deviate from their structured system to take a few more offensive chances.
"We're learning to play at a quicker pace," Stanford senior center Jason Collins said. "We're athletic enough to play at this pace, but smart enough to stay within our offense."
North Carolina's taller forwards shut down the Cardinal offense in the second-round upset. Stanford didn't have a way to create shots on its own, or at least, didn't try. That's not the mentality this season. Montgomery is loosening the reins on point Mike McDonald, willing to give playmaker Julius Barnes more time behind him to break a defender down and hoping shooting guard Casey Jacobsen takes it upon himself to be more assertive.
Ryan Mendez won't be as quick as David Moseley at big guard, and that's the one position where Montgomery said the Cardinal got bigger but not athletic. But don't be fooled into thinking freshman reserve shooting guard Matt Lottich doesn't have speed. He outran everyone in the mile during preseason conditioning, giving the clean-cut Midwesterner a spot in the rotation.
"The first thing coach Montgomery did when practice started was tell us that we need to break people down to get open shots," Jacobsen said. "We were one shot and out against Carolina. We didn't have emotional plays, a dunk, penetrating and dishing.
"But it's hard here," Jacobsen added. "Coach Montgomery stresses getting the good shot and a lot of guys don't know if they can create for themselves. We all have it in the back of our mind if this is a good time or not to take it to the basket."
What happens to the Cardinal, Jacobsen said, is they get tentative from looking for the opening to the basket, especially if a post player such as Jarron Collins is positioned for the ball.
"I don't want to ruin it by breaking down my man," Jacobsen said. "A lot of other teams do that. Arizona just drives and goes by to the basket. But when things go out of whack, we do have structure. And we made people play D. A lot of teams don't make us play D, they just drive."
Stay injury free, a serious chore here, and the Cardinal have as athletic, albeit not as talented yet, a frontline as Arizona.
Two faces are familiar to the Cardinal in twins 7-foot Jason and 6-10 Jarron Collins. But the other three post players haven't either been healthy or played for the Cardinal yet.
Curtis Borchardt, he of the 42 blocks in 20 games, is still hobbling from a stress fracture in his right foot that kept him out of the last 11 games. But once the 6-11 sophomore gets a regular turn on the court, the Cardinal can come off the bench with a more imposing shot blocker than either Collins twin.
Jarron Collins doesn't have an injury. Whew! Check out this stat. The Cardinal was 28-2 when he scored in double figures. Got it. Brother Jason Collins, 12 pounds heavier, is still hampered by nagging knee injuries that keep him with a strict schedule of two days practicing, one day off. But when he's on, Jason gives the Cardinal more of a true post-up player than his brother Jarron.
The two who could alter the way the Cardinal are perceived, let alone score and defend in the post, are redshirt freshman Justin Davis and true freshman/quarterback Teyo Johnson. Davis, who came out of high school with just as much pub in California as summer-league teammate Drew Gooden of Kansas, gives the Cardinal an active, attack offensive rebound player.
"He's relentless on the boards," Jarron Collins said.
But his preseason effectiveness is limited because of an inflamed bursa sac behind his knee.
"We're more athletic, but we do lose court awareness with Mark and Moseley gone," Davis said. "There's going to be a tradeoff. We just have more athletic ability, we'll get to the boards quicker, play defense quicker. It's going to be a contrast."
And then there's Johnson. Stanford was so impressed with Julius Peppers, Carolina's defensive end turned power forward, that it got one of its own. The 6-7, 256-pound Johnson looks like an end, but he's actually Stanford's third-string quarterback. An injury to starter Randy Fasani nearly had Johnson off the court and in the huddle for the rest of the fall semester. The plan was for him to redshirt football and play the whole year in hoops.
Now that Fasani has returned, Johnson is with the basketball team unless the football team calls. Montgomery might not answer. Johnson gives the Cardinal a bruising, quick-to-the ball forward they missed in the past.
"We've needed a guy to guard Richard Jefferson (at Arizona) and Teyo can do that," McDonald said. "He's 6-6 but can guard an athletic player like that. We'll improve tremendously when we go bigger this year."
But it's not that simple. Montgomery needs the Cardinal to get mentally tougher in big games.
And?
"We still don't have the Brevin Knight stuff where someone can break it down and take someone one-on-one," Montgomery said. "Our concepts will be the same but it will depend on how fast we can outlet the ball and get it going. We always tried to break but games would get tight and we would get conservative."
That's where athleticism comes in.
"Last year, Mark wasn't outmatched but at times against guys like Michael Wright (of Arizona) it was hard to get around him," Barnes said. "Now with Justin, Teyo and Matt, who is like Sacramento's Jayson Williams in that he's a black guy in a white guy's body, well, once they learn the system, we'll be a lot more athletic. Because we might be able to take more shots on our own."
Do that and the Cardinal might look more like it did with Arthur Lee and Kris Weems in the backcourt during the '98 Final Four run. But what was still missing from that team was an athletic frontcourt.
The Cardinal finally has both.
Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com. | |
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