STANFORD, Calif. — University of San Francisco men's basketball head coach Todd Golden lowered his head, clasped his hands behind his back and walked down to the end of the Dons' bench.
Stanford freshman Spencer Jones had just hit a wide-open three from the right side — the dagger in the Dons' 64-56 loss — and the first-year head coach knew his team had just missed a major opportunity.
San Francisco punished the Pac-12 front-running Cardinal early, with arguably their best defensive half of the season. Stanford, though, caught up after halftime, dealing a blow to the Tournament hopes of Golden's first team.
"We controlled that game for 30 minutes without taking care of the ball," Golden said. "That's what's really disappointing. I don't think this game was indicative of who we are. If people watched this game, the only time they saw us all year, I think this is a terrible representation of what we've done over the first 10 games of our season. It hurts, but nobody's going to feel sorry for us."
The Dons (9-3) came into the night ranked No. 78 in the NCAA's NET — the evaluation tool that replaced the RPI — with a win and a close loss against Pac-12 teams. Stanford (10-1) — off to its best start since 2011-12 — came in ranked ninth. The Cardinal, though, were missing point guard Tyrell Terry, and San Francisco capitalized on an offense without its main distributor.
The Dons forced 11 turnovers in the first 20 minutes, held Stanford to just 18 points (the first time this year they'd held a team under 20) and limited the Cardinal to a paltry 30.8% shooting — second only to the first half against Yale for the lowest shooting percentage by a San Francisco opponent in a half this season.
San Francisco out-rebounded the Cardinal 23-14, and pulled down seven offensive rebounds, and freshman Josh Kunen held forward Oscar da Silva — who came in averaging a team-leading 17.4 points per game — to 1-for-6 from the field, as the Dons led by as many as 11.
It looked as if Golden — who interviewed for an assistant job at Stanford before Kyle Smith hired him on as his defensive coordinator on the Hilltop four years ago — had a chance at his first signature win, one which would put the Dons solidly in the conversation for an at-large bid to the NCAA Tournament before conference play even began.
Instead, at halftime, Stanford head coach Jerod Haase changed several offensive cuts to get more reaction in the middle of the floor, partly to get more post touches for da Silva, and partly to get Daejon Davis going downhill. It worked.
Da Silva went 6-of-7 from the floor in the second half and finished with 18 points. Davis, too, finished with 18, going 6-of-7 in the second half after going just 2-of-4 from the field before the break.
"[Davis] was really patient, really good on the ball screens in the second half," Golden said.
As the Cardinal shot 68.2% from the floor in the second half and out-rebounded San Francisco 17-11, the Dons went 12-of-30 after the break, and 5-of-18 from beyond the 3-point arc.
Junior Dzmitry Ryuny hit one of those triples — a falling-backward heave from the left corner while drawing a foul. He flexed his biceps as he sat on the floor, before getting up and hitting the and-one to keep the Dons up 41-34 with 11:23 to go. Stanford then went on a 14-5 run to take a lead on a Davis layup with 3:53 to go. The Dons never led again.
"Honestly, the second half wasn't too terrible, but I think it was a little bit of our lack of offensive effort that led to a lot of that," Golden said. "We turned the ball over quite a bit. Later, that led us to take some chances and foul, and they got 10 points in the last two minutes that they wouldn't have gotten if we'd played straight-up."
Charles Minlend hit three 3-pointers down the stretch, and led the Dons in both points (18) and rebounds (7), adding three assists.
Point guard Jamaree Bouyea finished with 15 points on 7-of-11 shooting, with a team-high four assists.
