Bronco Brook

You know, sometimes when a player is out for an extended period of time, you forget how much better he makes a team.

Stanford 74, Santa Clara 48

Brook Lopez dominated this game every single minute he was in the ballgame. Rebounding. Threatening blocks. Hedging hard on high screens. Playing tough one-on-one D against one of the leading scorers in the country (John Bryant, now just under 20 points per game). But most of all, scoring practically at will. With his size and athleticism, he can be practically toeing the baseline with two defenders draped on his back, and he'll still be able to lean back and spin a layup in off the glass.

If any college hoops player could ever justify Keyshawn Johnson's mantra (just give me the damn ball), it's Brook Lopez. I actually felt kind of sorry for Robin, because he's been playing really well and suddenly is going to get fewer minutes and fewer shot opportunities.

If Brook plays this well all season, he's going to be a consensus top 5 draft pick. You can't turn down that kind of money. I hope that if he goes, Robin will stay for at least one more season, perhaps two more. He's already made big strides offensively, and I feel like getting out of his brother's shadow might have a salutary effect on his perceived draft status (which right now is not as high as it, by rights, should be). It's not like they'll be playing together in the NBA anyway, so there's no real reason why they would have to come out at the same time. And I think a Stanford team led by seniors in Anthony Goods and Lawrence Hill, retaining Robin Lopez and working in raw-but-talented Josh Owens would be a force to be reckoned with come Tourney time.

Unrelated notes: A really positive sign in this game was that they completely shut down Santa Clara's perimeter offense. Despite running two bigs for much of the game, the Cardinal defenders were able to stick close to SC's guards and really limit their offense to tossing the ball in to Bryant and hoping he could do something with it. Incredibly, Santa Clara had only FIVE assists in the entire game.

Brook did get into a bit of foul trouble, picking up 4 in 19 minutes of play. A couple of them were kind of cheap, though. By and large he did a good job defensively.

Taj Finger had a nice little game. He's not usually much of a scorer, but he was 3/5 from the field and hit 4 free throws, and ripped down 11 rebounds for a double-double. He and Hill both have excellent rebounding instincts, and it shows (Hill had 8 boards along with 16 points).

Up next is a tough trip. The Cardinal head out to Dallas to play what is technically a neutral-site game against Texas Tech (and to be fair, Lubbock is a good several hundred miles away and there won't be a student section). Trips across multiple time zones are always tricky; Cal got tripped up by Kansas State 2 Sundays ago, and if the team had come out of the gate just a tiny bit quicker, they might well have won that one. Did jet lag play a role? Who knows, but Pac-10 teams always seem to have a tough time of it going east. At least Stanford's game will be at 1:30 Pacific time (3:30 local), a perfectly reasonable starting hour.