Next Up - Stanford At The Farm

Date 1/17 || Time 6:00 || Venue Maples Pavilion || Video ACCN

If you haven’t been paying attention, Stanford’s win over UNC came as a big surprise. If you have been paying attention, you probably know that Ebuka Okorie, at a minimum, is the second-best freshman in the ACC this season.

Okorie continues a recent trend of really good players from New England. Cooper Flagg is obviously the highlight here, but Donovan Clingan is from Bristol Connecticut and Okorie grew up in New Hampshire. Duke’s redshirt freshman Sebastian Wilkins is from the Boston area too.

Okorie, whose parents emigrated from Nigeria, has burst on the scene like a supernova. He’s absolutely killing it and stuck it to UNC pretty well on Wednesday with 36 points and 9 rebounds.

Down the stretch against UNC, Stanford showed a lot of resilience and competitive desire, but this kind of went overlooked in the comments about that game: they did it without perhaps their second best player.

Chisom Okpara, like Okorie of Nigerian descent, missed the UNC game with a lower extremity injury.

Okpara, who normally gets 28.5 mpg and puts up 13.9 points and 3.9 rebounds, has been an asset for the Cardinal. At 6-8 and 240, he can obviously throw his weight around. He used to play for Tommy Amaker’s Harvard, where, Barry tells us, Okorie once committed. He doesn’t shoot well but he probably doesn’t need to.

Aside from Okorie and Okpara, the Cardinal rotation includes Benny Gealer, a 6-1 senior, AJ Rohosy, a 6-9 senior, Jeremy Dent-Smith, a 6-1 senior, Ryan Agarwal, a 6-6 junior, Aidan Cammann, a 6-10 sophomore, Oskar Giltay, a 6-10 freshman, Cameron Grant, a 6-7 sophomore and Donavin Young, a 6-8/220 lb. sophomore.

Smith has put together an intriguing blend of experience and talent. Obviously Okorie is the star and he’s really, really good. What we love about him is not just that he’s a talented guard, but he’s also shown immense competitive desire. In Stanford’s win over Virginia Tech, he either scored or assisted on an insane number of Stanford’s points in the second half. We love him. Do we fear him?

On Saturday, yeah.

Then we’re going back to loving him because he’s really, really good and that guy does not want to lose. He also seems to have good character. What’s not to like?

Against UNC, Dent-Smith was outrageously good, but he was also way above his norm. Can he do that twice in a row?

Maybe. We’ll have to see.

Against Duke, he’ll have a lot of long defenders to deal with which might slow him down a bit.

Gealer is a guy we didn’t take very seriously last year, but he’s emerged as a really good player this season. Notably, he hit a buzzer beater against Saint Louis with a mere 0.8 on the clock.

We were intrigued by Ryan Agarwal last season. There just aren’t that many NCAA players of Indian descent so we were pulling for him. He’s made some big advances this year and is an important part of the rotation.

The other players we don’t know as well yet but we trust Smith to find his kind of players much as former Virginia coach Tony Bennett found his guys for years.

We have a ton of respect for Okorie, but Duke has potential answers for him. It’s possible that 6-8 Dame Sarr, who is emerging as a real defensive demon, might get first crack at him. The 6-2 Okorie will likely also see Caleb Foster, Isaiah Evans and Cayden Boozer, along with whoever might get him on switches.

The freshman is really gifted but Notre Dame held him to 7 while Virginia kept him to 14.

Stanford will have to control Evans, Foster, Pat Ngongba and most of all, Cameron Boozer, and we’re sure Smith has his formula ready. We admired how hard Rohosy played against UNC, especially in winning time, but he seems somewhat limited. Intensity can make up for a lot, though. If you want an analogy, imagine Ryan Young.

But Duke can also attack with Dame Sarr on the perimeter and Nik Khamenia all over the court.

So what to expect? Well, it depends.

If Duke can control Okorie, Stanford’s path narrows. If Okpara is still out, that’s a problem for the Cardinal too.

Cal really focused on Cam Boozer and that worked for awhile. But it also opened the game up for Evans, who delivered and Boozer got his late.

It won’t surprise us if Stanford has some junk defenses in mind to deal with Boozer and Evans. Evans, by the way, has really gotten more aggressive lately. He took 14 threes against FSU, hitting 6, took 10 at Louisville hitting 4, took 8 against SMU hitting 4 and took 13 at Cal, hitting 4. In those games collectively, he’s hit 18-45, and some have been absolutely huge, not least of all the late three against SMU.

To us, the bottom line here is to keep the pressure on Stanford. If Sarr and Foster can suppress Okorie, the points will have to come from other guys. It could happen, but it might not be as efficient as Okorie is, especially late.

A win at Stanford would be good for a lot of reasons, most obviously that Duke would remain in a tie for first place in the ACC, where Clemson and Miami are also undefeated.

Duke found itself defensively in the second half against Cal, and while the Blue Devils have made starting slow something of an art form this season, you don’t want to push it against this team because Stanford is dangerous. And keep in mind that while it didn’t matter against Cal, Duke’s free throw shooting was atrocious Wednesday. That could be the difference Saturday.

On that note, keep in mind that Gealer is a superb free throw shooter, currently shooting 92.5%. Dent-Smith and Okorie are also quite good at 81.8% and 81.5% respectively.

This is a game that will require not just effort, but smart basketball. And there are absolutely no guarantees. And keep this in mind, too: we knew that the West Coast swing would be tough, but we didn’t realize that so far, only Wake Forest has swept both games.

We’ll add links as we find them.

• Men’s Basketball Welcomes Duke
• Stanford, Cal to host ACC’s premier men’s hoops schools in No. 6 Duke, No. 15 North Carolina