SETTING THE SCENE
Stanford men's basketball closes its weekend in Los Angeles with a Saturday night battle at Galen Center against USC. The action gets underway at 7 p.m. on ESPNU.
THE OPENING TIP
• The Cardinal is 11-15 (5-10 Pac-12) this year, including wins in six of the last nine games, and five consecutive wins from Jan. 19-Feb. 2. Stanford beat No. 4/4 Arizona last Saturday on Feb. 11, 88-79.
• Through 26 games, Spencer Jones leads the team with 13.4 points per game, and joined Stanford’s 1,000-point club on Dec. 29 with a 25-point outing against Colorado. Jones paces the program in Pac-12 play with 15.0 points per game, which ranks ninth in the league. He also ranks fourth in threes per game, fifth in 3-point percentage and 10th in offensive rebounds.
• Harrison Ingram, who was Stanford’s first Pac-12 Freshman of the Year since Casey Jacobsen in 2000, withdrew his name from the 2022 NBA Draft to return to The Farm for his sophomore campaign. He is the first Pac-12 Freshman of the Year to return since Jahii Carson (Arizona State) in 2013-14.
• Stanford ranks 10th nationally in minutes continuity, per KenPom, while also bringing in the program’s first transfer in 12 years and the first graduate transfer in program history in Michael Jones (Davidson). Jones is one of five players league-wide to score at least 31 in a game this season and ranks third on the team in scoring at 9.6 per night, behind Spencer Jones and Ingram.
• Stanford enters the game in the midst of its best basketball of the season, winning six of the last nine. Over the stretch the Cardinal has outscored its opponents by nearly seven points per game while limiting foes to 40.8 percent shooting from the floor. The Cardinal offense is shooting 47.4 percent from the field and 39.7 percent from 3-point range, and it has picked up quadrant one wins over Arizona and Utah.
TROJAN WAR
The Cardinal swept the season series with USC a year ago, besting the No. 5 Trojans at Maples, 75-69, and the No. 15 Trojans, 64-61, in Los Angeles. The two wins leveled the all-time series at 129-129. Five of the last six meetings have been decided by six points or less. Harrison Ingram and Spencer Jones led the charge in the ranked wins a year ago, averaging 16.5 and 15.5 points, respectively, in the two games. The first win ended USC's unbeaten season and started a stretch of two straight years with a top-five win.