Road-tested Texas-Arlington hopes to extend Stanford’s recent home-court miseries Wednesday night when the Mavericks and Cardinal duel in a nonconference game in Stanford, Calif.
Texas-Arlington (7-3) has won three of its last four road contests, including beating Texas-Rio Grande Valley 58-50 in its most recent outing last Thursday. The Mavericks already had road wins at Evansville and Weber State on their docket.
Defense and depth have been the driving forces in the Mavericks’ fast start. They have held five opponents to 61 or fewer points, winning all five of those games.
Marcell McCreary (14 points), Raysean Seamster (12), Marcus Rigsby Jr. (12) and Cameron Jackson (10) all reached double figures in the low-scoring win over UTRGV.
“Our guys were tough and again ground out another win,” Texas-Arlington coach KT Turner told reporters after last week’s road win. “A lot of guys played and a lot of guys had their hand in this win.
“I’ve been telling the team and told them before the game that it’s who we are. We are a defensive team and our defense is going to create offense and we’ve got to live by it. It’s just who we are. We’ve got to guard people and get stops.”
Stalling Stanford (8-2) figures to be a tall task. The Cardinal have scored 77 or more points seven times this season, winning all seven of those games.
Not included in those seven were losses in two of their last three home games — 77-69 to Seattle on Nov. 21 and 75-74 to UNLV on Dec. 7. The team is 5-2 at home this season.
The Cardinal followed up the home loss to UNLV with an 86-82 win at San Jose State on Saturday, but even that had a downside. Stanford had to go without leading scorer Ebuka Okorie (21.0 ppg) in nine games, all starts, who was held out due to what the team called a lower-body injury.
The star freshman guard’s status remains unclear for the Texas-Arlington game and moving forward, which includes the Atlantic Coast Conference opener at home against Notre Dame on Dec. 30.
“We just have to stay together,” Stanford forward AJ Rohosy said after contributing a season-high 20 points to the win over San Jose State. “Ebuka’s a big part of our team. Now that he’s out, we have to make some adjustments.”
–Field Level Media
