Has Jerod Haase found the formula for winning basketball on the Farm?

By Matthew E. Milliken
MEMwrites.wordpress.com
Jan. 5, 2024

A year ago, I tweeted the following note about Stanford’s men’s basketball team:

5-9 Stanford is losing by 16 points to 2-13 Cal.

I have nothing personal against Jerod Haase, but he has not made this program into an NCAA team, and at this point I don’t know why the school would bring him back for an eighth season. #GoStanford #NCAAmbb

— Matt Milliken | masks on for safety | mostly @HOME (@memomoment) January 7, 2023

The Cardinal lost that game by 22 points and finished the 2022–23 season with a 14-19 record, including a 7-13 Pac-12 Conference mark. There was no ‪NCAA‬ tournament berth, nor any postseason invitation of any kind.

Suffice to say that I don’t have the ear of Bernard Muir, who has served as Stanford’s athletics director since the summer of 2012. Jerod Haase indeed came back for his eight year as men’s basketball head coach for the Cardinal.

I don’t follow men’s or women’s college basketball as closely as I do college football, so my perspective on Haase’s squad is mainly informed by the No Truck Stops podcast, which originated as a Pac-12 show but will switch to Big 10 and Big 12 coverage next year. The No Truck Stops hosts described the Cardinal as a team with strong talent but weak coaching and a tendency to commit turnovers at an egregious pace.

The early results seemed to bear this out. The Cardinal started 3-1 against a slate of relatively anonymous opponents, losing only to local rival Santa Clara. Then the team went to the Battle 4 Atlantis tournament in the Bahamas and lost three straight, including a 73-51 blowout to 2-4 Northern Iowa on the event’s final day.

The next time I tuned into the Cardinal was to listen to the last several minutes of a 76-73 home loss to Arizona State in the Pac-12 lid-lifter on Dec. 29. This was a game in which Stanford led by double digits with 11 minutes left in the second half. The rest of the way, the Farm hoopsters were plagued by turnovers and missed free throws. As the postgame show wrapped up, I turned off the KZSU community radio station live feed with a feeling of disgust at the team’s poor play.

Two nights later, I was very surprised to receive a notification that the Cardinal held a large second-half lead against Arizona, then ranked fourth in the nation. I switched over to the Pac-12 Network for the last shot of the game as Kanaan Carlyle hit a three-pointer in the closing seconds to seal a 100-82 victory. Carlyle, a freshman reserve guard out of Atlanta, led all scorers with 28 points. That was the most scored by a freshman on the Farm since 2012, and it got him named Associated Press national player of the week and Pac-12 freshman of the week.

Well, not too shabby. But Haase’s squad beat the Wildcats at home in three of the past four seasons, including this one, and none of those resulted in an ‪NCAA‬ tournament bid. I figured that the club that lost to ‪what had been a 6-5 ‪‪ASU‬‬‬ team was more likely to show up on any given day than the one that hit a school-record 16 three-pointers in the upset of highly regarded Arizona.

On Wednesday night, I happened to catch the early minutes of the Cardinal’s last scheduled face-off against UCLA in Pauley Pavilion. Nothing I saw changed my reckoning. The 6-7 Bruins took a 10-0 lead a little more than three minutes into the contest. The hosts retained a comfortable lead as the first half continued. I turned my attention elsewhere.

Later, I thought to check the score and was very surprised to find that the Cardinal had a second-half lead over their opponents in the Westwood section of Los Angeles. I wasn’t able to watch any more of the game, but Haase’s club went on to claim a 59-53 victory. Carlyle again led all scorers with 17 points off the bench. Stanford’s record rose to 7-6 (2-1 Pac-12) as UCLA was held to its lowest offensive output against a Cardinal team in Pauley since 1973. (It was also a season low in points for UCLA.)

I’m still somewhat skeptical that Haase’s team can be a contender in the final season of the current configuration of the Pac-12. We’ll know more after the Cardinal plays at 7-7 USC on Saturday afternoon. The game tips at 1 p.m. Pacific Time on the Pac-12 Network. If Stanford gets another road win, I’ll certainly be inclined to give Haase and his players — and Muir, who brought Haase back this year — a lot more credit.

Here’s hoping that 2024 has me seeing through Cardinal-colored glasses!