By Jeremy Harness

 

STANFORD – The tail end of Wednesday night’s game proved one critical fact that in big-time college basketball, you don’t have a chance of winning when only two players score almost all of your points.

 

Washington State found this out the hard way against a much more balanced Stanford team that was coming off a big win at No. 13 Oregon on Sunday. After a pitched battle in the first half, the Cardinal raced away and never looked back in a 80-48 win at Maples Pavilion.

 

Stanford (11-5, 2-2 Pac-12) pretty much got whatever they wanted on offense, shooting 58 percent from the floor, which included 40 percent from 3-point range. Washington State, on the other hand, shot just 37 percent after going 44 percent in the first half.

 

Anthony Brown and Josh Huestis, who recently trimmed his trademark mini-Afro and sported the look for the first time Wednesday, each led the Cardinal with 15 points while two others, Dwight Powell and Marcus Allen, also scored in double figures.

 

Meanwhile, only two Cougars hit double figures, with Que Johnson putting up 21 points on 8-of-15 shooting while Royce Woolridge had 13 and made six of his 13 shots.

 

That was good enough for Washington State (8-9, 1-4 Pac-12) to hang around in the first half, as Stanford could not contain Johnson at all in the first half. The redshirt freshman diced up the Cardinal in the 15 minutes that he played in the opening stanza, scoring 15 points and connecting on all but one of his seven shots, including his draining each of his three 3-point attempts.

 

Stanford and Washington State traded baskets – and the lead – while Johnson was on the floor. After he took a seat at the 3:57 mark of the first half with Stanford holding a two-point lead, the Cardinal began to distance themselves from the Cougars to take a 40-29 halftime lead.

 

To say the least, the scoring was much more balanced for the Cardinal than it was for Washington State. Seven different guys scored for Stanford, with Anthony Brown leading the way with 12. Meanwhile, Royce Woolridge had 11 first-half points, but besides he and Johnson, Dexter Kernich-Drew was the only other Cougar to score with three.

 

The onslaught only increased for the Cardinal, as their lead swelled to 25 points by the midway point of the second half.

 

Washington State did not get its first bench points of the game until the midway point of the second half, when Ike Iroegbu made a layup to narrow Stanford’s lead to 27.

 

Stanford will host Washington Saturday night before heading down to Southern California to face USC and UCLA.