Missouri Valley Conference Basketball Tournament Recap

CBI Quarterfinals: Hot-shooting trio lifts Stanford past Wichita State

On a Monday night when the town of Wichita fell silent, the Stanford Cardinal brought a confident new law firm to the state of Kansas. Anthony Goods, Laurence Hill, and Jeremy Green might not get law degrees from the prestigious university they attend, but they definitely established order for coach Johnny Dawkins' club.
 
Goods, Hill and Green combined to score 22 of Stanford's first 25 points, leading the Cardinal to a huge early lead and a relatively easy 70-56 win over the homestanding Shockers in the CBI quarterfinals. The 14-point victory sends Stanford into the CBI semifinals for a Wednesday night road fight at Pac-10 rival Oregon State.
 
There wasn't a lot of drama in this different kind of "court" room, because three fabulous shooters made sure the Shockers behaved at the outset. Goods, Hill and Green represent the foremost scoring options on a Stanford team that likes to shoot long and mid-range jumpers. In the first 14 minutes of action, the terrific trio's dead-eye aim prevented Coach Gregg Marshall's Wichita State squad from becoming a particularly rude host at Charles Koch Arena.
 
The final 26 minutes of this game proved to be so markedly uneventful because the first 14 were so thoroughly decisive. Goods, Hill and Green hit nine of their first 12 shots, three of them 3-pointers, in the game's first 11 minutes and 15 seconds to give the Cardinal a 25-10 lead at the 8:45 mark of the first half. That lead would grow to 30-10 with 6:17 left. Wichita State made some brief mini-runs, but never chipped the deficit to single digits the rest of the way. Three Stanford studs put their foot down at the beginning, and didn't give any breathing room to the seventh-place team in the Missouri Valley Conference.

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Just how much did three men carry a team on a wrong-way Monday for Wichita State? Goods, Hill and Green hit 18 of Stanford's 27 made field goal attempts while also accounting for five of the team's six made 3-point shots and seven of the Cardinal's 10 made free throws. Stanford does run into problems when shots aren't falling, given that the ninth-place team in the Pac-10 lacks the size and power needed to work the ball close to the rim. Without the NBA-playing Lopez brothers (Brook and Robin), this year's incarnation of Stanford basketball has understandably suffered, but when outside shots drop through the net, Johnny Dawkins' boys are a very tough out. Marshall and the rest of the Wichita State coaching staff discovered this truth in an all-too-personal manner.
 
The Shockers learned what it feels like to go up against a hot-shooting team when they fell way behind Creighton in the quarterfinals of the Missouri Valley Conference Tournament on March 6 in St. Louis. On that day, Wichita State had a comeback left in its tank, but a few weeks later against Stanford, a limited team with insufficient size could only do so much in the face of a superior shooting display. The Shockers will return to the drawing board as they gear up for next season. They'll do so with the knowledge that they have to close down on hot shooters and do a better job of pestering opponents at the defensive end of the floor.

Stanford isn't yet looking to next season. With one more win against a very familiar foe, the Cardinal will secure a spot in the best-of-three CBI Championship Series.

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By: Matt Zemek
DFN Sports Staff Writer