SETTING THE SCENE
Opening its final road trip of the 2025-26 campaign, Stanford men's basketball travels to Notre Dame on Wednesday, March 4 at 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET). The action will air on ESPNU.
THE STARTING FIVE
• Stanford is out to a 18-11 start and 7-9 mark in the ACC, including four quadrant one NET victories against then-No. 14/15 North Carolina, No. 16/13 Louisville, Saint Louis and at Virginia Tech.
• Ebuka Okorie ranks fifth in the country in scoring at 22.7 points per game and second among freshmen, behind only BYU's AJ Dybantsa, and he leads the ACC in scoring, just above Duke's Cameron Boozer. Named to the top-10 lists for national freshman of the year by ESPN, Bleacher Report, Field of 68 and Hoops HQ, Okorie was added to the Naismith Trophy Late-Season Team on Feb. 19.
• Stanford won the Acrisure Invitational in Palm Desert with wins over Minnesota and Saint Louis, with Benny Gealer's buzzer beater on Nov. 28 sending the Cardinal home victorious.
• Only 37 teams nationwide have at least four quadrant one wins, with Stanford one of nine ACC teams to reach the threshold. Both of the Cardinal's remaining games are in the top two quadrants.
• Maxime Raynaud graduated from Stanford in 2025 after posting one of the top seasons in program history, and the All-American was drafted by the Sacramento Kings in June. Stanford's NBA alumni are shining above expectations, with Raynaud scoring 10.4 points per game, Ziaire Williams 9.1, Brook Lopez 7.3, Spencer Jones 5.8, and Dwight Powell 3.1. The double-double king at Stanford, with 25 in a single-season last year, Raynaud leads all NBA rookies with 12 double-doubles this season.
SENIOR DAY SUCCESS
As Stanford celebrated its senior class, Benny Gealer scored a career-high 30 points as Stanford throttled SMU, 95-75, on Feb. 28. Gealer’s 30 points came with a career-high seven 3-pointers as well as four rebounds and a career-high six steals. He is the first player at any school, nationally, to score 30 points with 7 3-pointers and six steals against a major conference opponent in at least 20 years. Ebuka Okorie, who entered the night as the ACC’s leading scorer, finished with 22 points, six assists and two steals.
OKORIE: ONE OF ONE
Ebuka Okorie has dazzled for the Cardinal this season with averages of 22.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, 3.5 assists and 1.6 steals per game. Okorie ranks fifth nationally in scoring and second among freshmen, trailing only BYU's AJ Dybantsa nationally, and he leads the ACC, just ahead of Duke's Cameron Boozer. Okorie became the first Stanford freshman with four-straight 20-point games since Brook Lopez from Feb. 15-24, 2007, and the first Stanford player with back-to-back 30-point games since Landry Fields from Jan. 23-28, 2010. He would be the first freshman to meet his averages in points, rebounds, assists and steals since Oklahoma's Trae Young and Howard's RJ Cole in 2017-18.
Okorie has toppled the Stanford freshman scoring record three times this season. First, he broke the standard with 32 points against Colorado (Dec. 20) and then topped his own mark with 36 points against North Carolina (Jan. 14). Scoring 40 points against Georgia Tech (Feb. 7), Okorie became the first Stanford player with a 40-point game since Casey Jacobsen scored 41 on Feb. 7, 2002 vs. Oregon, and Okorie’s performance is the ninth in program history with at least 40 points. He was just the fifth (now six) freshman in ACC history to score 40 points in a game, joining Cooper Flagg, Tyler Hansbrough, Harrison Barnes and Olivier Hanlan, and since, Mikel Brown Jr. The last ACC freshmen guards to average at least 20 points per game were Kenny Anderson (Georgia Tech, 1989-90) and Mark Price (Georgia Tech, 1982-83).
Okorie's six 30-point games are tied for second most by any freshman in ACC history, just one away from matching Marvin Bagley III (Duke) in 2017-18. Okorie also co-leads the country in games with 25 or more points, along with Dybantsa.
His 18 made free throws against Colorado are the second most in a single game by any player in program history, trailing only the 19 by Reid Travis on Dec. 3, 2016 vs. Kansas. The 18 makes and 21 attempts at the line are the sixth- and fifth-most by any player in the country this season, and he ranks eighth in the country with 6.5 free throws per game.
ACC SCHOLAR-ATHLETE OF THE YEAR
Finding success on the court and in the classroom, Benny Gealer was named the Skip Prosser Award recipient as the ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year.
Gealer is Stanford men’s basketball’s sixth consecutive Scholar-Athlete of the Year, as Stanford won the final four Pac-12 awards in the category and Maxime Raynaud won the award in 2025 from the ACC. In addition to Raynaud, Gealer joins Oscar da Silva (2021), Sam Beskind (2022), James Keefe (2023) and Brandon Angel (2024), extending the program’s streak, and he becomes the 10th recipient of the honor from either conference, along with Dorian Pickens (2018), Chasson Randle (2015), Dwight Powell (2014) and Landry Fields (2010). The men’s basketball program becomes the first of Stanford’s 36 teams to win six consecutive scholar-athlete of the year honors, dating back to the award’s inception in the Pac-10 in 2007-08.