Knight Opened Talent Gate At Brain Factory

You could tell it was a special occasion at Friel Court, what with college basketball’s top-ranked team in town.

The place was electric, which is to say the lights were turned on, and the black plastic shrouding the upper-bowl seats was polished to an especially fine gloss.

But then, how special could it be? Earlier this week, Stanford coach Mike Montgomery was asked how it felt to be No. 1 again and allowed oh-so-offhandedly that, “It’s better than being 319.” Easy, big fella.

Of course, this was before he brought the Cardinal to Pullman on Thursday and saw just how desperate it is to live the life of No. 319, or whatever Washington State’s area code is on the college basketball computer these days. One glimpse is enough to make any coach crave the hype.

The Cougars counted 5,129 customers where 11,000 and 12,000 used to rock the joint for top-ranked opponents, and were ecstatic to have them seeing as they constituted the second-largest crowd of the year. No doubt that had something to do with the game not being on live TV, the carnage being potentially too gory even for Fox during the February sweeps.

The lone homemade sign in the student section looked to have been scrawled in ballpoint on the side of a cardboard box. The message was hard to make out, but probably went something to the effect of “Will keep the spread under 40 for food.”

And, by golly, the Cougars did - falling 89-52, probably the best that could be expected under the circumstances, which included yet another Job-ish calamity (a season-ending knee injury to guard Jan-Michael Thomas) and the fact that Stanford’s last victim lost by 51 points.

“They’ve only lost once, so they’ve done that to a lot of basketball teams,” said WSU coach Paul Graham.

No kidding. Try the last 11, by an average of nearly 24 points a game.

Remarkably, the victory only served to pull the Cardinal into tie for first in the Pacific-10 with Arizona, which seems to play better with each new guy they lose to injury. If the Wildcats ever get down to an all-walk-on starting lineup, they’ll be a lock for the national championship.

Still, Stanford is the talk of the land, not just because of its ascension back to the head of the class this week, but the fact that the Cardinal has managed to make itself at home among the upper crust for three or four years now - long past the anticipated success expectancy of your basic brain factory.

This is a school which went 47 years between NCAA Tournament appearances, and now appears good enough to make it back to the Final Four for the second time in three years.

What’s more, when we last checked in with the Cardinal, they were taking smelling salts after a second-round KO at the hands of Gonzaga in the Seattle subregional last March. A check of the program showed four starters graduating from that team, so who could have imagined the rebuilt model generating this kind of horsepower?

“Losing to Gonzaga when we did was tough,” admitted Mark Madsen, back in no-prisoners mode after missing eight games with a pulled hamstring. “But they were a very good team. We had anticipated going much further in the tournament, but they took it to us.

“I think the guys on this team are more focused and want to make a statement.”

And the statement is what? That smart guys can win, too?

Certainly the Cardinal has managed to prove that in virtually every other sport in which it bothers to field a team. Swimming, cross country, fencing, tennis, golf, baseball - Stanford has won 50 national championships the past 14 years, though it has yet to connect in the two biggies which tend to favor quick-twitch muscles over quick thinking.

Montgomery’s challenge, when he took over the program 14 years ago, was to somehow make Stanford a place where basketball players came to get a great education and not a place where great students just tried to play basketball.

It started with a trickle - first Todd Lichti, then Adam Keefe. But if the program had a turning point, it was when Montgomery was able to lure point guard Brevin Knight from the other coast.

“Maybe in people’s minds, he broke the stereotype of what Stanford might have appeared to other people,” Montgomery said. “Along comes Brevin, who’s got a little bit of cockiness to him, kind of the brashness, going to talk a little bit, brings the East Coast penetrating guard to the thing.

“When we first got here, people looked at us as not being the same as other Pac-10 schools athletically - that we got a certain type of kid and it wasn’t for them. I think now people understand that we’re competing fairly favorably in the Pac-10.”

Uh, you could say that. It was painful to watch the Cougars try to generate offense against Stanford’s man-to-man, though they did manage to shoot better than the national-low 33.8 percent opponents are averaging. Still, the Cougars couldn’t have scored less had they been bound in duct tape and barricaded inside a burning frat house.

And then when Stanford makes 14 of its first 15 shots in the second half, what are you going to do?

This game obviously isn’t going to help Stanford win a championship. But while taking care of the small stuff, Montgomery and his staff have also tried to look at the bigger picture.

“Mike’s genius is in detail,” said assistant Blaine Taylor, who joined Montgomery last year after seven years as head coach at Montana. “He’s always been good at adjustment, and wherever his teams fell short, he’s addressed those. Mike is one of those guys who’s very analytical about how things end and why.

“In the non-conference schedule we’ve played and some of the tournament games where they met their Waterloo, he’s looked at what went wrong. And I think we have a feel for how to counter what people might do to us. Our wings are little better on the dribble now, our posts are better passers, we can get on the break a little more now.”

“But in the end, because the program has done better, we’re able to get better players, and that’s why you win.”

Another unwanted lesson Thursday night, but a necessary one.