OAKLAND, Calif. -- Casey Jacobsen dreamt about hitting a game-winning shot like every other college basketball player. But he didn't have any kind of premonition that it would occur against Duke.
|  | | Stanford's Casey Jacobsen lets fly with the shot heard 'round the college basketball world. |
He didn't even think he'd get the chance during Thursday's game, especially with Stanford down 15 and on the verge of getting blown out with just under seven minutes remaining.
"I've never taken a shot like that," said Stanford's sophomore guard after his bank shot with 3.6 seconds left lifted the Cardinal to a stunning 84-83 victory over top-ranked Duke at the Pete Newell Challenge at the Oakland Arena.
"There was no better stage than with 19,000 fans, the No. 1 team in
the country," Jacobsen said. "If I were to miss that shot, I wouldn't be
talking to you right now. I'd be really mad. But now, any future situation
that we're in, we can look back on this and say we can come back."
Jacobsen's shot was only part of Stanford's statement Thursday night.
The No. 3 Cardinal, soft on a schedule outside of this game, was the mystery
of the top three. They had the obvious shooter in Jacobsen, but no one knew
if he was a reliable go-to player. They had the bigs in the Collins twins,
Jason and Jarron, reserve Curtis Borchardt and even newcomer Justin Davis,
back from an abdominal strain. But no one knew if Stanford could hang with
a Jason Williams at the point or a Shane Battier on the wing.
Every question was answered in the final few minutes.
Stanford had
trouble keeping up with Duke for 30-plus minutes, giving up too many
transition baskets and being unable to convert at the other end. But, in the end,
they were the team that got Duke into its vulnerable bench when both Carlos
Boozer and Battier fouled out. Stanford, not Duke, had a point guard make a
critical shot when Mike McDonald buried a 3-pointer to cut the lead to four
with 2:30 remaining. And when McDonald fouled out, it was backup point
Julius Barnes who tied the game on a fast-break layup with 1:12 left.
"I was waiting for a game that would test our character and our
minds," Jacobsen said. "I was dog tired the last five minutes. When you win
by 40, like we have, it's not a good feeling. You're not competing. To
win this game showed so much for the team and for each other and we weren't
even playing that good. I still don't know how we got back into it. We were
struggling."
But the Cardinal didn't go away from what they do best, and that's execute coach Mike Montgomery's system. The Collins twins were involved all but two baskets in the final four minutes. They were instrumental in getting Boozer and Battier to foul out, too.
"That was our goal going into the game, get the ball inside," Jason Collins said.
"We knew we could win this game and what it would do for the
Stanford program," said Jarron Collins, who was pumped that Tiger Woods was
at center court to witness the win.
"This was a big-time win for the Stanford program," Jarron Collins said. "We beat them last year (in the Coaches vs. Cancer tournament in New York) and everyone forgot about it."
That's why Jarron and Jason Collins were quick to point out that
this was a major comeback, not a major upset.
But doubting the Cardinal
wasn't without basis in fact. Stanford doesn't play the national schedule Duke,
Michigan State, Illinois or Arizona do this season. The Cardinal were in a
tournament in Puerto Rico over Thanksgiving, but drew Memphis and Georgia,
two teams that probably won't make the NCAA Tournament. They beat Georgia
Tech at home Tuesday and still play New Mexico in January. But that's it for
the name games on the schedule until the
Pac-10 season.
"It proves that what we believe in wasn't necessarily what you guys
believed in," Stanford's Ryan Mendez said. "I'm not talking about you,
ESPN, but everybody. After the game, coach (Mike) Montgomery told the guys
that this is what happens when you believe in yourself every night. We
haven't played the caliber of competition that Duke has, but we finally broke
through the barrier."
This was Stanford's chance to make a statement, whether that's fair or not. Beating Duke doesn't clinch anything more than confidence in the
Cardinal both in Palo Alto and beyond.
Stanford beat the Blue Devils last
year and got a No. 1 seed in the South before losing to North Carolina in
the second round. But the difference seems to be the maturity of McDonald,
the depth Barnes brings at the point, Jacobsen's emergence as a go-to
threat, the Collins twins together as an immovable force for the first and
only time in their career, and the role play of Mendez, Davis and Borchardt.
Arizona hasn't answered its latest challenges after beating Dayton and Illinois in Maui by losing at Connecticut and Illinois. But Stanford passed its only test.
"In every single huddle, after I missed a 3-pointer, Casey missed
one and Julius missed one, every time we said that if we play defense and
stay with it we could win," Mendez said. "Maybe it was fake at the
beginning when we were down. But it wasn't at the end when we eventually got
the lead down."
There's nothing phony about the Cardinal now. Beating Duke ensures they will be taken seriously as a legit national title contender.
"We'll remember this game when we're old," Jacobsen said. "I'm not old now. But I will always talk about this game. I know we will for the rest of the season."
After Jacobsen's shot, Stanford's real season has officially begun.
Andy Katz is a senior writer at ESPN.com.
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