Recap: Stanford men’s basketball dominates Portland with balance
On Monday, Stanford men’s basketball defeated Portland at home by a final score of 94-72. Guard Jeremy Dent-Smith (16 points), guard Benny Gealer (15 points), forward Oskar Giltay (15 points), guard Ebuka Okorie (10 points), and guard Ryan Agarwal (10 points) all scored in double figures for the Cardinal. The first time the Cardinal had six players score in double figures since November 13th, 2015 against Wisconsin-Green Bay (which they won in overtime 93-89). Forward Cameron Williams was the top scorer for Portland with 22 points. Stanford improves to 7-1 overall while Portland falls to 5-4.
VIDEO: Stanford Men’s Basketball Postgame Press Conference: Portland
BOX SCORE: Portland at Stanford-Monday, December 1st
“Felt really good about a lot of things in this game, especially playing our third game in five days, coming off a really emotional win against Saint Louis,” Stanford head coach Kyle Smith said after the game. “Never know how exactly how you’re team’s gonna handle it. I thought our guys handled it really well. Came out, shot the ball really well. That always helps first half and I didn’t, what were we from three? Hold on. It was pretty good. 11 for 19, you should be up 20 at half. So you’ve gotta guard and then the second half, we went three-for-14, which is disappointing to it because I thought we had some good looks. But you know, we about 32, 33 minutes, we played really, really good.
“We didn’t guard the two. They were one of the best two-point shooting teams in the country and they’d find a way to score around the rim and stuff and kudos to them and they shot it pretty well, but we overall, defensively pretty solid. We rebounded well. We got 12 offensive boards against them and they’re usually top 20 in the country in defensive rebounding and then only eight turnovers. They don’t turn you over a lot, but any time we’re under 10, is gonna be pretty good, should be a good result.”
Stanford and Portland were tied at 10-10 with 16:09 remaining in the first half. Gealer had scored five points for the Cardinal with a fastbreak layup and a 3-pointer, while Okpara had made a 3-pointer of his own. Cameron Williams and Mikah Ballew each had 3-pointers for Portland.
Stanford led 25-16 with 10:27 left in the half. Dent-Smith made his first 3-pointer of the night. It was huge for the Cardinal to get him going early in the game.
Stanford held a 27-19 lead over Portland with 6:40 remaining in the half. Okpara (6 points) led the way for the Cardinal. The Cardinal were looking strong, but Portland was still hanging around.
With 3:16 left in the half, Stanford led 42-22. The Cardinal had turned on the jets, going on an 11-0 run over the last 1:48 as Okorie reached 10 points and caught fire.
At halftime, Stanford led Portland 51-31. Okorie was leading the way for the Cardinal with 10 points and 3 rebounds. Gealer had 8 points. Both players were 2-4 from deep.
Stanford led 64-40 with 15:56 to go. Stanford had made five of their last five field goals. Stanford had held Portland’s leading scorer Joel Foxwell to 2 points up to that point, showing great defense to contain him.
Stanford led 71-46 with 12:11 remaining. Dent-Smith had 15 points on 5-7 shooting from three-point range. He was really starting to find his groove after a strong performance against Saint Louis.
“I think it’s just getting more confidence,” Dent-Smith said of his recent success. “I know I had a couple games where confidence was low. I was missing shots I feel like I usually made. Coach Smith and just all my teammates have been on me it’s just about next play and just building confidence in me and then I was able to see one go through last game. I think, just from there, just you know, kinda being a shooter, you know, just once you see one fall, the rest will start to feel better and so they just have been feeling better next game in. Credit to my teammates and you know, my coaches just keep pushing me every single day.
“I think it’s all just like rhythm. I feel like coming in, like reads were okay for me, like just coming off a ball screen, making a simple read, whether it’s hitting the roller, hitting the backside, lift guy. I think all that stuff was getting easier. I think just being able to focus, my coaches always say, like we know you can score, like, don’t make that your calling card. Like, just focusing on defense and just trying to, you know, lock in on defense because ultimately, that’s the thing that’s gonna keep me on the court.
“So I think once I just get better on defense and then you know, I’ll let the offense come, I feel like once you get a couple down and backs, you get a couple stops, like once get that shot, the rhythm, seeing one go through, like I said earlier, it just all starts to, you know, kind of just put it together. So, I think seeing one go through and then getting confidence every single day from these guys is just something that helps me.”
Stanford led 75-53 with 7:52 left. Dent-Smith recorded a steal and assisted Benny Gealer for a 3-pointer, bringing Gealer’s total to 13 points. Stanford led 83-67 with 2:43 to go. The Pilots made the score look a bit more respectable. Okpara had 14 points for Stanford, while Williams had 22 points to lead Portland.
From there, Stanford would expand their lead a bit to win 94-72. Portland never was really in this game as Stanford cruised to victory. As I wrote at the beginning, Stanford had six players score in double figures, something they hadn’t done in 10 years.
“That’s great, that’s how you really kind of want to be,” Smith said of that scoring balance. “The democratization of our point distribution, you know, obviously Ebuka has been tremendous and I think that’s just the next step is there’s some other guys and they’re gonna do thing that try, you can see like they’re doubling them in the back court and pushing them off the ball and doing some other things.
“You know, and having Oskar be able to be a force around the rim was terrific. Jeremy opening things up with his shooting and you know, and I thought Chisom actually played really, he got in a little bit of foul trouble, but he’s a dynamic player, you know, just gets downhill and he can throw some, he threw some good passes and the better he gets that way, like distributing, the better we’ll be.”
“Yeah, I thought it was incredible,” Gealer added. “Obviously five-for-10 from three, which is incredible. I thought Oskar rebounded really well. 15 points for a freshman, really really solid. And then Ryan Agarwal had a really good game. Just know, shot it very confidently, had some drives, some nice finishes. So you know, when you have guys off the bench that are super-efficient and they’re starter level players, you know, on any given night, so it was really helpful and it made the game easier for everyone.”
Overall, this is a good win for Stanford. They were expected to beat Portland, but the way they did it was encouraging. They pretty much led wire to wire and did a nice job of not allowing Portland to have much signs of life. If you are Stanford, this night went as well as you could hope. Holding Portland’s leading scorer Joel Foxwell to two points was a big part of that success.
“You know what, just we thought he, you know, we made that the head of the snake,” Smith said of containing Foxwell. “We want to go, you know, guard him. I think people under, I mean, Benny and Ebuka are really good defenders on a guy like that I think and you know, we just made it hard on them and I, believe me I was surprised, he’s a good little player, but I don’t know, nothing more than, this is telling this is their best, this is the key to the whole deal and we did a good job of making other guys beat us and Williams had a good game. And we were worried about George. Yeah, he still had nine. He was pretty good in his 18 minutes. But, nothing out of the ordinary other than just getting a great senior effort from Benny and then Ebuka did contribute there, too.”
Up next for Stanford is more challenging opponent in the UNLV Runnin’ Rebels. That will be on Sunday, December 7th at 1:00 PM PT on ACCNX.
“Well we need to get rested,” Smith said looking ahead to UNLV. “On the second part of the question a little bit. We’ll watch some film tomorrow, kind of do a game review from tonight. Get some guys that haven’t been playing as much get some work, and then a day off, and then we’ll get ready and it’s time to clean up some stuff we’re doing, still add a couple of, like our whole offensive package and even tighten up our zone stuff, you know, being able to have that as part of our defensive package and do better there, helped us win the Saint Louis game, but just still kind of getting better into where we get to league here hopefully, you’re, there’s not much more to add after that, but well played by our guys and proud of them coming in there. Could have been, could have been easy to come in here, just kind of sleepwalking or just fatigued in general, but they did a really nice job.”
CardinalSportsReport.com on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), & Bluesky: @StanfordRivals
Ben Parker on Facebook, IG, Threads, X (Twitter), YouTube, & Bluesky: @slamdunk406
Email: [email protected]
Join the conversation on CardinalSportsReport.com
