A team and its man: you recognize Josh Childress for his hair, but it's his game that will decide Stanford's tournament fate

Sporting News, The, March 15, 2004 by Bruce Pascoe

In his eight years across the bay from Stanford's Maples Pavilion, California coach Ben Braun has become familiar with the ways of the Cardinal. Stanford usually has size, depth, balance and a system with strong team-oriented roots. No surprises there.

But during a mid-February game at Cal's Haas Pavilion, Braun saw something else--actually it was something he didn't see coming.

His bulldog of a center, Leon Powe, was being denied by a player 40 pounds lighter: Stanford's silky small forward, Josh Childress.

"Leon had a couple of looks where I thought, 'Wow, Leon got to the basket and made a good move," Braun says. "Then here's Childress coming out of the rafters, it seems, and he blocks the shot. I'm saying, 'Whoa.' He's just that type of player."

This season, Stanford has made a lot of people say, "Whoa." There was the hot start while Childress, an All-American candidate, was sidelined for the first nine games of the season with a foot injury. A 19-point rally against Oregon. Hard-to-believe buzzer beaters against Arizona and Washington State. The back-and-forth with Saint Joseph's to see who could stay unbeaten the longest--until Washington beat Stanford in the regular-season finale. But while there have been many contributors to a great season, it is Childress who makes the team better equipped for the NCAA Tournament than any other under coach Mike Montgomery.

Past Stanford teams usually have gone as far in the tournament as matchups allowed, becoming routinely bounced by more athletic opponents. The 2001 Cardinal, which posted a 31-3 record, was smothered in the Elite Eight by Maryland. Four other Stanford tournament entries in the past five years have gone home after the second round.

Childress' emergence gives the Cardinal an athletic difference-maker on the wing who can shoot the 3 or drive inside for a rebound, who can slide over for a block or create on-ball defensive pressure.

"I don't know that I've had a guy like Josh before" says Montgomery, in his 18th season at Stanford. "He combines an awful lot of things. He can get double-figure rebounds, with his quickness and anticipation, and he's an awfully good shot-blocker. He's surprised a lot of people."

For all the damage he can do, Childress does not carry himself with a swagger. He could have started doing so years ago: Childress was a McDonald's All-American at Los Angeles' Mayfair High School, starring in the ego-swelling spotlight of Southern California.

His game was dismantled somewhat during his freshman season two years ago, molded to fit into the Stanford system while Casey Jacobsen and Curtis Borchardt received the ball much of the time.

Childress didn't mind.

"I didn't feel like coming in here would be a problem for me," he says. "I felt like coach Montgomery did a really good job of integrating structure with freedom. It was very easy for me to put aside my individual goals and think about the team because I knew that we all are going to do that."

Montgomery says Childress entered Stanford with a good team mentality but lacked the understanding of how to execute it. That's hardly unusual for a high school All-American used to having a team depend on him.

"I think to play good basketball you have to be fundamentally sound, and a lot of kids who are the best players on their teams are not forced to learn to play fundamentally," Montgomery says. "It's hard sometimes. Their footwork coming off screens is difficult, and you're stepping up to a level where older, stronger kids all of a sudden can guard you.

"But he's such a good kid that rather than complain or worry about what he wasn't able to do, he just realized that trying to get better would make him better."

This year, when Childress was cleared to play again at the beginning of the Pac-10 season, the same mentality came in handy. He did not complain about coming off the bench for the first five games after returning from the foot injury.

"He was very unselfish when he came back," Cardinal point guard Chris Hernandez says. "He didn't make a big deal of it. He just wanted to fit in and keep the chemistry going."

If there's a drawback to Childress' gentle personality, it's that sometimes he's too unselfish on the court. Montgomery says getting Childress to play aggressively all the time is critical.

But Childress played more consistently tough in the final month of the regular season. He averaged 22.8 points over a four-game stretch through the end of February, and he had 29 points and 12 rebounds while holding Oregon's Luke Jackson to l-of-5 from 3-point range in a 76-55 demolition of the Ducks on February 28.

"He's an easy-going kid," Montgomery says. "He's not a physical kid. But he played great defense on Luke Jackson and accepted that challenge personally, then got after him. It was good to see that he could take one of the better players in the league and minimize him."

More than once this season, Stanford has handled plenty of obstacles at less than full strength. When Childress sat out for the team's first nine games, the Cardinal beat Kansas and Gonzaga on neutral courts and defeated every other nonconference opponent except Rice by double figures. It also beat its first five Pac-10 opponents with Childress coming off the bench.