Point guard's growth is key for Cardinal

0 Comments | Oakland Tribune, Mar 20, 2008 | by Darren Sabedra

ANAHEIM -- Stanford can start to exorcise its NCAA tournament demons today, start to show that it's deserving of a No.3 seed, start to prove that last season's Louisville debacle was a fluke.

But the bigger challenges will come after today's opener against No.14 seed Cornell, perhaps as early as Saturday's second-round game against No. 6 Marquette or No.11 Kentucky.

That's when the nation will find out if Stanford's guards can handle postseason pressure defense, if they can keep their poise and make the plays that will extend the Cardinal's season.

For four months, Stanford's guards have made the plays,

have withstood the heat, have done what they've been asked to do since returning home from the Louisville game. Now, Mitch

Johnson and Co. will be asked to do it on the college game's biggest stage.

Are they ready?

"I think so," said Johnson, who ranks 31st in the nation in assist-to-turnover ratio and 66th nationally in assists per game (4.8). "UCLA obviously applies pretty good pressure. We played a lot of different styles in the preseason, maybe not of Louisville's quality, but I think we'll do better."

Johnson's progress this season has been crucial to Stanford's success. He had opened last season a starter, lost his job early in conference play and didn't start last year's tournament game against Louisville. In fact, the point guard played only 14 minutes on a day in whichthe Cardinal had 21 turnovers and just 10 assists.

This season, Johnson has had more turnovers than assists just one time, the first game against UCLA, back in January. In last week's Pac-10 Conference tournament -- against NCAA-bound Arizona, Washington State and UCLA -- the junior had 19 assists and nine turnovers.

Told that an NBA scout had noted Johnson's improvement as the key to Stanford's season, coach Trent Johnson said, "No question. Mitch has taken so many hits since he's been here, especially last year. But I've always said this: He's what college basketball is about.

"He's a student-athlete. He overachieves. His decision-making, his ability to get the ball into the right people at the right time. The one thing he does really well that's a lost art in basketball, period, is he understands angles. He understands how to feed the ball to the post."

And, as Trent Johnson says, the point guard has done it against much better athletes.

"Every game in our league, I'm not so sure you can say that Mitch hasn't went up against a guy who has had a size advantage, a quickness advantage and a skill-level advantage," Trent Johnson said.

Johnson's improvement -- like that of his teammates -- started last summer. It was during the offseason workouts that every player on the team, including 7-footers Brook and Robin Lopez, was expected to handle pressure defense.

"When Brook and Robin get an outlet pass to save a backcourt violation, they make good plays," forward Lawrence Hill said. "They keep the ball high. Those are things that they worked on in their individual workouts. It's expected of us now. Before it was like, 'Oh, we're going to do it.' Now it's like, 'You better.'"

A game like last season's against Louisville can do that to a program. Now, the Cardinal has another platform to change its postseason reputation.

"Getting our butts handed to us (last year), that's definitely in the back of our mind," Hill said. "I'm pretty sure we're not going to take it lightly. The feeling of losing and knowing the season's over is one of the worst feelings in the world."