Author: jeremy2878

 

 

By Jeremy Harness

 

STANFORD – It didn’t look pretty, but No. 8 Stanford – as all elite teams are able to do – found a way to get another big win.

 

Stanford’s offense was steady early but sputtered down the stretch, only to watch senior cornerback Wayne Lyons thwart Notre Dame’s late rally by intercepting quarterback Tommy Rees twice in the fourth quarter, allowing the Cardinal to escape with a 27-20 win over the No. 25 Fighting Irish at Stanford Stadium.

 

Now the Cardinal will prepare to take on No. 12 Arizona State in the Pac-12 championship game, which will be held in Tempe, Ariz., next Saturday for the right to play in the Rose Bowl. The Cardinal won the head-to-head matchup Sept. 21 , by a 42-28 score, during which they out-rushed the Sun Devils, 240-50 and held a commanding 39-7 lead after three quarters before Arizona State mounted a fourth-quarter comeback.

 

The running game is how the Cardinal won Saturday’s game as well, racking up 261 rushing yards to Notre Dame’s 64. That is almost always a recipe to winning big football games, and that has been Stanford’s calling card during David Shaw’s tenure as its head coach.

 

Despite the dominance in running the ball, however, the Cardinal made some uncharacteristic mistakes in the second half that swung the momentum in Notre Dame’s favor and put the Cardinal in danger of having the game get away from them.

 

“They’re really good up front,” Shaw said of Notre Dame. “We knew we had to keep pounding. We knew we had to keep fighting. We knew they were going to come back. They’re that good of a football team.”

 

Stanford gained the upper hand early in the half, but Notre Dame started to get back into the game in the second quarter, converting on key pass plays to keep drives going. While the Cardinal were much more effective on the ground, the Fighting Irish actually held a slight advantage in time of possession in the first half.

 

One of Shaw’s biggest points of emphasis is scoring touchdowns instead of field goals once the offense gets into the red zone, and that was the difference between the two teams in the first half; the Cardinal converted both of their red-zone opportunities into touchdowns while Notre Dame was forced to settle for field goals.

 

The direct evidence of this was on the schools’ first possessions of the game. Notre Dame took the ball first and drove all the way to the Stanford 11, eventually taking a 3-0 lead on Kyle Brindza’s 31-yard field goal.

 

Stanford got into the red zone as well, but unlike Notre Dame, found the end zone as Kevin Hogan’s 16-yard strike to Devon Cajuste gave the Cardinal a 7-3 advantage.

 

 

 

 

In beginning the second half, Stanford again established its ground-game dominance and, as a result, extended its lead when Anthony Wilkerson scampered up the middle for a 20-yard touchdown to give Stanford a 21-6 lead.

 

Notre Dame responded by again getting into the red zone on its first possession of the second half, thanks to a pair of defensive penalties against the Cardinal. This time, however, the Irish were able to cash in, as Tommy Rees hit T.J Jones to narrow Stanford’s lead to eight.

 

From that point, the roles completely reversed in terms of red-zone conversion.

 

Stanford marched down the field, getting to Notre Dame’s 5-yard line. However, Tyler Gaffney’s 5-yard touchdown plunge on third-and-four was nullified by a holding penalty. The penalty, which was only the second holding call on Stanford’s offensive line all season, forced the Cardinal to settle for a 37-yard field goal.

 

The Irish then further cut into Stanford’s edge, converting on a pair of pass plays on third-and-long to keep their drive going until Rees finished it off with a 14-yard scoring pass to Davaris Daniels to bring the Irish to within four late in the third quarter.

 

The Cardinal’s ensuing drive resulted in another field goal to give Stanford a 27-20 lead early in the fourth quarter, and a defensive struggle ensued.

 

Stanford’s defense forced a three-and-out but gave the ball right back when Hogan’s third-down pass was intercepted by cornerback Bennett Jackson. Lyons, however, returned the favor by picking off Rees with 5:15 remaining.

 

But the Cardinal’s offense again failed to pick up a first down, and Notre Dame got the ball back with one timeout left and 3:35 to work with. Rees, however, decided to test Lyons one more time and failed, as the senior’s second interception allowed the Cardinal to run out the clock and escape with the win.

 

“We knew it was going to be a tight ballgame,” Shaw said. “This is a really good Notre Dame football team. We knew it was going to come down to the end.

 

“(Now) we have to rest up, get all our bruises healed and get ready for one heck of a football game next week.”

By Jeremy Harness

 

Manny Paquiao was on the verge of retirement, having lost his last two fights and being knocked cold in his mosr recent fight.

 

That seemed like ancient history Saturday night, as he bludgeoned Brandon Rios for 12 rounds and brought back memories of the old Pac-Man, with the hand speed that brought him to this level proving to leave Rios in the dust.

 

The judges also saw this. The three scoring the fight had it 120-108, 119-109 and 118-110, all for the Filipino superstar.

 

In his porevious fight, Pacquiao was knocked unconscious by Juan Manuel Marquez in the sixth round, which seemed to kiss the potential megafight with Floyd Mayweather Jr. goodbye. With this victory over Rios in this convincing a fashion, this could reinvigorate the talks of that match possibly happening.

 

Pacquiao’s record is now 55-5-2, and that is said to have set up a fight on April 12 in Las Vegas, either against Ruslan Provodnikov or a rematch against Timothy Bradlley, against whom Pacquiao dropped a highly-disputed decision in 2011

By Jeremy Harness

 

STANFORD – Big Game? Big Rout is more like it.

 

It took about a half of a quarter to really set in, but Stanford fulfilled the prediction for this year’s rivalry game between the Bay Area-based Pac-12 schools, stampeding a hapless Cal squad, 63-13, at Stanford Stadium Saturday afternoon.

 

It marked the fourth straight Big Game win for the Cardinal, but another game that was played earlier in the day proved to be even bigger and also swung in Stanford’s favor. Stanford appeared to be headed for a potential Holiday Bowl date after its loss to USC last week, but Arizona upended No. 5 Oregon on Saturday, 42-16, to give the Cardinal the Pac-12 North championship.

 

Stanford has no more conference games left – the Cardinal host Notre Dame next week – while Oregon has one more, against Oregon State next Saturday. Even if Oregon wins, both schools would have two Pac-12 losses with Stanford owning the tiebreaker.

 

“Our guys showed a lot of maturity all week about how hard they worked, about preparing for this football game, about coming out here and keeping the axe,” Stanford coach David Shaw said. “This was about our conference, keeping the axe. Our guys did that.”

 

While the North division is ironed out, the Pac-12 South, however, is anything but.

 

At press time, the top two teams in the South – UCLA and Arizona State – were getting ready to lock horns at the Rose Bowl while USC, which has suddenly emerged as a challenger for the title and has broken into the Top 25, takes on Colorado.

 

As it stands, Arizona State sits atop the division, but all three schools have a realistic shot at the title. The Sun Devils and Bruins each control their own destiny; if Arizona State beats UCLA Saturday, it will wrap up the division since they own the tie-breaker over USC.

 

If Arizona State wins out, the title game will be played in Tempe, but if Arizona State beats UCLA but loses to Arizona in the finale, Stanford would host the conference championship.

 

However, if UCLA wins, the race becomes wide open.

 

USC can come away with the division title with wins over Colorado and UCLA in the regular season finale – coupled with Arizona State losing to Arizona – to set up a potential rematch with Stanford in the Coliseum.

 

If UCLA wins out, that would set up a repeat matchup of last year’s Pac-12 title game at Stanford Stadium Dec. 7.

 

However, Stanford would not have factored into the Pac-12 picture at all if it didn’t take care of its end of the deal against Cal. Ty Montgomery had a big hand in deciding that, as the Cardinal held a 42-13 at halftime.

 

The emerging star receiver-kick returner blistered Cal for five touchdowns in the first half, which tied him for the most scores in a game by a Stanford player with Darrin Nelson in 1981. He finished with 191 total yards while Stanford racked up 603 yards of total offense.

 

Montgomery’s sidekick, quarterback Kevin Hogan, threw for 329 yards and five touchdowns, connecting on 17 of his 26 passes.

 

Stanford got started with the offense right away. On the third play from scrimmage, Montgomery shot past the Cal defense for a 31-yard touchdown run to give Stanford a quick 7-0 lead.

 

The Golden Bears, however, didn’t seem to immediately get the memo that they were supposed to get blown out of Stanford Stadium. For their first possession, the Bears used their Air Raid offense to slice through the Stanford defense and get into the end zone to tie the game, a drive culminating in freshman Jared Goff’s 15-yard strike to Maurice Harris.

 

Stanford made sure they got it in short order. From there, the Cardinal stiffened up and stuck it to the overmatched Bears, with Montgomery doing most of the damage. Following an unsuccessful onside kick by Cal that gave the ball to Stanford at midfield, Hogan again connected with Montgomery for a 50-yard touchdown.

 

Montgomery scored three more times in the half, one of them coming on the second play of the second quarter, which saw him race away from the entire Cal defense for a 72-yard touchdown catch-and-run to give the Cardinal a 28-10 advantage.

 

“It’s awesome,” Hogan said. “Just getting him the ball, he makes me look good.”

 

His final score came with just five seconds left in the half, as he caught a 9-yard scoring pass from Hogan.

 

On the Cal side, Goff finished with 194 passing yards and a touchdown while completing 10 of his 19 throws. However, he left the game in the second quarter with an injury to his right throwing shoulder and did not return. His replacement, fellow freshman Zach Kline, completed eight of his 14 passes for 115 yards and was intercepted once.

By Jeremy Harness

 

STANFORD – While most top teams in the country are busy getting fat from beating up on much-lesser opponents, the Stanford basketball team is no stranger to being tested early in the season.

 

Friday’s 2013-14 season opener was no different.

 

Bucknell, the defending Patriot League champs, proved to be a very tough out during the entire course of the game. As the Cardinal got out to a big lead by stringing together a few baskets, the Bison made shots of their own and kept the game close.

 

“It takes a mature team to win a game like that,” Stanford head coach Johnny Dawkins said, adding that Bucknell’s scoring late in the shot clock can be “demoralizing” for an opposing team.

 

In short, they looked just like the team that knocked off Kansas in the 2005 NCAA Tournament, and Stanford could not mount a big run or get a comfortable-enough lead to hold off the Bison.

 

Anthony Brown, who knocked down a big 3-pointer in the final minutes and finished with 14 points and five rebounds, advised that they need to be better finishers going forward, pointing out the fact that the Cardinal could not get a double-digit lead.

 

“Once we get the lead to seven, we need to push it to 10,” Brown said. Once we get it to 10, we need to push it to 15.”

 

It’s not that the Cardinal didn’t play good defense – which has been the staple of this team for the past few years – but Bucknell just kept hitting great shots every which way. The Bison used spin moves to the basket as well as the 3-point shot to stay in the game until the very final seconds.

 

In fact, it wasn’t until Ben Brackney’s desperation heave at half-court came up short at the buzzer when Stanford was able to close the game out. Seconds earlier, Stanford got defensive stops but neither Dwight Powell nor Chasson Randle, who led the Cardinal with 18 points, could make a free throw to seal the game.

 

“Very frustrating,” Powell, who had 17 points and 12 rebounds on Friday, said of his failure to knock down the crucial foul shots. ”Zero percent from the line (to start the season) isn’t fun.”

 

Bucknell hung around in the first half, even taking the lead in the closing minutes and only trailed by a point at halftime. Stanford came out strong to start the 2^nd half, quickly opening up a five-point lead on the strength of its 3-point shooting as well as daring moves to the basket by Randle.

 

But Bucknell came right back with a rally of its own, tying the game with 13:19 left when Kaspar pulled off a sweet no-look, over-the-head pass to Dom Hoffman for an easy layup.

 

“He made some of the best passes I’ve seen in a long time, over his head, behind his back,” Dawkins said. “He made a lot of plays at the basket.”