After last weekend, when Stanford split against the Arizona schools—loosing to ASU in overtime and winning a close game against Arizona two days later—I heard many remarks around campus and read articles online that discounted the now #9 ranked Cardinal’s ability. Losing a game on the road in the strong Pac-10 conference is far from an immediate sign of weakness.

First, it is important to create some perspective on the situation. It is really easy to forget that college basketball is composed of athletes who are about twenty years old. Although they may receive an intense amount of scrutiny and national attention, these players are still young and figuring out how to balance the game, the attention, and the pressure that comes along with expectations. This is one possible explanation for the outcome against Arizona State. Stanford had just acquired their #7 ranking, after rising to that level from around #20 in about 3 weeks time. I would think that the team felt a whole new level of expectations over their shoulders after those rankings came out.

As of February 19th, John Gasaway from Basketball Prospectus wrote an article that talks about the major conferences in NCAA basketball and quantifies their possessions per 40 minutes, their points per possession, their opponents points per possession, and their efficiency margin. Stanford is far from lacking in the points per possession category at 1.04 points; however, the much more impressive statistic is that they only allow 0.93 points per possession from their opponents. This is by far the best defensive performance in the Pac-10 (UCLA is next highest at 0.97). Also, this ranks in the top couple teams of all the major conferences. It is this statistic that helps explain Stanford’s 21 wins so far this year.

Therefore, when people can’t imagine how Stanford would play against the run and gun offenses of Memphis, UNC or Duke, they wouldn’t—they would slow down those offenses. A showdown between Stanford and Duke would look very different from the game a couple weeks ago between UNC and Duke. Unlike in that game, Stanford wouldn’t be taking too many shots with 25-30 seconds remaining on the 35-second shot clock, and they would try to lock down Duke, not take too many risks on defense, and better control the pace of the game.

Stanford does look different from many of the other teams in the top 10; however, they still belong to be there. Defense can win games just as much as offense can.