And so it ends. Year Three of the Jerod Haase Era will in all likelihood stand as a necessary evil if and when Stanford’s Anne and Tony Joseph Director of Basketball gets the program back to prominence, and in many ways the best that can be said of 2018-19 is that it’s over. Stanford put up a performance very much in line with its season in falling 79-72 to UCLA on play-in Wednesday of the Pac-12 Tournament in Vegas. Stanford found itself down 26 points to UCLA with 13:32 to go in the game, and it earned every bit of that deficit with the all-too familiar cocktail of a struggling offense with outside shooting woes and turnovers. The second half of the second half showcased a team finally and fully lost in the game in the way Coach Haase has often discussed. Stanford was aggressive, they shared the ball, they contested, and they took advantage of a UCLA team that seemed awfully committed to doing what they needed to do to lose the game.

Stanford shot 1-11 from three in the first half, a number that grew to 1-17 in the second half. The Cardinal had an offensive efficiency rating of 56.4 in the first half. Overall, the team made eight field goals (on 35 attempts for a 23% rate). The frustrating thing is that Stanford was executing as a group better than it has all year in terms of player movement, ball movement, and getting good looks. Yes, the turnovers. It was all wildly sabotaged by the fact that Stanford’s three most talented offensive players (KZ Okpala, Daejon Davis, Cormac Ryan) went 4-25 on the night. Okpala closed his season in a ten-game funk, Davis was clearly hampered by the ankle injury that held him out of games and practices for two weeks, and Ryan could not shoot his way out of a slump or two ankle injuries that clearly impacted him on the court.

The season ends, and the truth is that’s probably the best thing for this team right now. Associate Head Coach Jeff Wulbrun noted that the team’s physicality likely wasn’t where it needed to be for the first 25 minutes, but at the same time, the Cardinal’s defense competed long past the point at which it looked like the game was a formality. Stanford wasn’t afraid of contact from courtside, they never got down on one another, and they forced UCLA to play out the game. Meager laurels in the short term, but necessary traits if they’re going to move on and become the team and program Coach Haase believes they can be. As Coach Haase summed up, “We've shown over the last I guess three games, a pretty anemic shooting display. And that was certainly a big part of not making shots and not just threes but around the rim. And we struggled to score the basketball to that level. Actually, I was pretty encouraged with the way the guys still competed defensively, but when you don't score it tends to take the life out of your defense. For the most part I thought the guys competed. But offensively we just were really, really struggling putting the ball in the basket. Once we did get a couple of looks and the guys, I thought, played a little bit more energy, got a couple of things going and continued to fight to the end which I'm certainly proud of.”

Stanford simply wasn’t good enough tonight. Part of it is that they weren’t healthy enough. Part of it is they weren’t experienced enough. Coach Haase is many things, but a spin doctor is not one of them. He knows the gap between where the team is and where Cardinal fans want it to be needs to close, and he remains convicted that that’s exactly what’s going to happen. The team has to get better, and it has to get better at making buckets specifically. Last season ended with a need for the team to get tougher, more skilled, and more athletic. You could argue that they hit two of those marks, and now it’s on the players to get to work on the fundamentals. Offense is supposed to be fun, and when you have the tools Stanford’s players have, it should be a lot more fun than it was for the Cardinal this season. Once the Cardinal gets a hold of its talent, playing Stanford should be a lot less fun for opponents in the years to come.

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R.J. Abeytia has been contributing to The Bootleg since 2014. You can follow him on Twitter at @RJ_Abeytia and follow The Bootleg @TheBootleg for up to the moment Cardinal news and analysis. Also, you can follow The Bootleg on our Facebook page. Drop by and give us a like!!

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