by Matt Harrington

PALO ALTO–It’s been since November 30th when the Stanford Cardinal faced DePaul and took a 87-72 shellacking, the Cardinal are up for their next game almost after a half month layoff as they face off against Denver at Stanford on Sat Dec 13th. This kind of rest is a good thing and a bad thing having that kind of rest.

Just based on the way that the Stanford roster is currently built they had former players Josh Huestis who is in the NBA Development League with the Oklahoma City Blue and Dwight Powell who is currently with the Boston Celtics. The Cardinal are looking for new fresh talent, in particular Reid Travis has been in the starting five the whole season.

There trying to get these freshman acclimated to Pac 12 play and their looking at a guy like Roscoe Allen who was hurt and is averaging (9.5 ppg) this season but missed the entire season last year and mixed the Sweet 16. He’s trying to get acclimated to NCAA basketball. It’s a gift and curse the team got a little bit of rest, probably the team would like to have it later in the season not early when your trying to get your rhythm.

Basketball is a touch sport if the shots are not going in the only way to get better at it is to start working on them and head to the gym and get that game situation and unfortunately the Cardinal haven’t had that kind of an opportunity to get into the championship and get into that game competition.

The good news is they really loaded up their pre season schedule early and they’ve been all over the place and they’ve played some big teams. They played Duke and they have got their first win and their first loss of the season. This is something they want to get out of the way early plus you want your season on track.

This is the time of the year when it’s student first and athlete second this is the time of the year where there is a lot going on with school. The students are working on finals for the semester. At Stanford it’s not exactly the easiest school to get through, so it’s nice for the team to get a little rest focus and hit the books and get ready again in just seven more days.

Matt Harrington covers Stanford basketball for http://www.sportsradioservice.com