1. Stanford
There's only one thing in short supply for the deep, physical and experienced Cardinal: tickets
Posted: Wednesday November 18, 1998 12:09 PM
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March
madman After helping Stanford reach the Final Four in '98, Madsen
(far right) anchors a front line long on muscle and
menace.
David E. Klutho |
It was
your basic Intro
To Economics problem, and one that, at Stanford anyway, would
have been deemed purely theoretical until this October:
What happens when the demand for men's basketball tickets
exceeds the supply?
Herewith, the case study: One fraternity pledge pitched a
tent outside Maples Pavilion 13 days before the 1,200
available student tickets were scheduled to go on sale.
Within a week about 60 tents, some furnished with couches,
VCRs, Foosball tables,
stereos, kegs of beer and, in one case, a movie projector
showing
Swingers,
had sprung up near the arena. A party spirit
prevailed—until the entrepreneurial spirit overwhelmed
it. A week after the first tent went up, after some
students had started selling places in line and the
camp-out ceased to be "a linear representation of
who was first, second, third
..." (as basketball marketing and operations director
Jamie Zaninovich put it), the athletic department decided
to give out tickets and disperse the
tent-dwellers.
O.K., so the students didn't have to endure six more days
of hardship waiting in line—did we mention the gas
barbecues, the big-screen TVs?—but they were
willing to, and therein lies a statement. Cardinal basketball,
once about as popular as a 7 a.m.
thermodynamics class, has caught fire with fans, and for good
reason. With 95% of the scoring and rebounding returning
from its first Final Four entry in 56
years, Stanford is SI's pick to win it all in St. Petersburg on
March 29. Not bad for a team that six years ago went 7-29 and
could muster only 2,532 souls for its home
opener.
Coach Mike Montgomery tries to enjoy the increased
attention, but he worries because, well, that's just what
he does best. While he concedes that this year's team
"should be as deep, more physical, more mature and
more confident" than last year's, he
doesn't want anyone reading too much into that. "It's a
little like when a guy has a million dollars, and by the
time the story gets around, he has a billion dollars,"
says the 51-year-old Montgomery. "I certainly have the
expectation that we're going to
be a good basketball team. You just worry that everyone's
going to add to
that."
Montgomery also frets, justifiably, about Stanford's
schedule—which includes games against Connecticut,
Maryland, Temple and the usual
Pac-10 killjoys like Arizona, UCLA and Washington—and
about how to give 13 talented players enough minutes to
keep everyone happy. Will last year's great chemistry
dissolve? Will his team lose its focus, get complacent? "No
way," says senior point guard
Arthur Lee. "So many people are going to doubt us, we'll
still feel like an
underdog."
| |
| STARTING LINEUP |
| POS. | HT. | CLASS | KEY STAT |
| SF Peter Sauer* | 6'7" | Sr. | 9.2 ppg |
| PF Mark Madsen* | 6'8" | Jr. | 8.2 rpg |
| C Tim Young* | 7'1" | Sr. | 11.3 ppg |
| SG Kris Weems* | 6'3" | Sr. | 12.6 ppg |
| PG Arthur Lee* | 6'1" | Sr. | 14.5 ppg |
'97-98 record: 30-5
Final rank (coaches' poll): No. 4
*Returning starter |
|
|
Lingering doubts about a team from Palo Alto may be
understandable, given Stanford's mostly dismal basketball
past. Before the Cardinal's 86-85 overtime loss to Kentucky
in the 1998 NCAA semifinals, it had wowed the nation
exactly twice: in 1936, when
Hank Luisetti's revolutionary one-handed shot helped end
LIU's 43-game winning streak, and in '42, when Stanford won
its lone NCAA title. The school
didn't make the postseason again for 46 years and seldom
finished better than .500 in its conference. But
since Montgomery arrived from Montana in 1986—amid
warnings from colleagues that "you'll never win
there"—Stanford has reached the
NCAA tournament six times, getting progressively closer to the
title game in each of the last three
seasons.
That run has helped transform the formerly innocuous Maples
Pavilion, a 29-year-old, 7,391-seat concrete box, into the
most intimate and arguably the most hostile arena in the
Pac-10. Among the features opponents find most unnerving: a
bouncy floor that makes every fast break feel like a minor
earthquake and the Sixth Man Club, a group of 750
red-shirted students (with a waiting list of 800) who never
sit
down.
What else does Stanford have going for it? The team is
huge: With seven guys
6'7" or taller, its famously physical front line is the
country's most imposing. It's deep: There are 10 returning
players who averaged 10 or more minutes last season.
And it's healthier: The chronic knee problem that sidelined
reserve center Jason Collins last year will still force him
to take periodic rests, but he should provide some backup
for All-America candidate Tim Young, who seems to have put
his chronic back
woes behind him with a daily stretching routine. "Tim
brought his game up to a whole new level over the
summer," says forward Mark (Mad Dog) Madsen, who
averaged
15.2 points and 12.2 rebounds in the NCAA tournament and made
the theatrical dunk that sunk Rhode Island in the Midwest
Regional final. Madsen has also benefited from
off-season work, which included planting 100 redwoods on his
parents' six-acre ranch in
Danville, Calif., and honing his jump hook with 100 shots a
day. Says guard Kris Weems, "Mad Dog is twice as good
as he was at this time last
year."
However good the frontcourt is, Stanford's success will
again depend largely on Lee, who went from ordinary player
to All-America candidate over the course of five tournament
games last March, when he averaged 20.6 points and 5.6
assists, made all 35 of
his free throws (an NCAA record) and launched the Cardinal
into the Final Four. In the final 2:05 against Rhode
Island he scored 13 of Stanford's 17 points and made the
steal that set up Madsen's winning
jam.
Another opportunity for Montgomery to worry: Yes, Lee can
score, but will he forget that his real role is to make
everyone else better? "Art's ability to make an
All-America team and to be drafted in the pros is going to
depend on his ability to make us
win," says Montgomery. "Where he's
gonna make his hay is getting us back to the Final Four and
keeping us
there."
Like all of Montgomery's players before him—each of
whom graduated—Lee is not inclined to leave business
uncompleted. "Last year was a dream come true
... almost," says Lee. "We just have to go back and
finish
it." —Kelli
Anderson
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