NCAA Basketball: Michigan, Stanford, Texas Tech and Northern Iowa takeaways from Battle 4 Atlantis

8th place – Stanford Cardinal

Positive takeaway: Offense has potential to be potent

That blowout loss to Northern Iowa took away what was actually some good performances from the Cardinal in the first two games, where they could’ve easily beaten Michigan and/or Arkansas. They got contributions from a few key guys, including Spencer Jones dropping 27 points against Arkansas, and Jared Bynum having 22 vs Michigan. And big man Maxime Raynaud still leads the team in both scoring and rebounding after a hot start.

There’s real potential with this roster to go off on anyone in Pac-12 play. Andrej Stojakovic and Benny Gealer have proven to be good players coming off the bench already as well. This is a team that you don’t want to give up yet on because they can definitely play “spoiler”.

Negative takeaway: The defense is too bad to be a tournament team

After this week, Stanford now ranks in the 300s nationally in points allowed at over 77. And they’ve played some good offenses but between giving up 89 points to Santa Clara and getting ran off the floor by Northern Iowa, it’s clear that they’ll give up points to anyone.

The Cardinal can score but they’ll give up just as much, which is why they went 0-3 in the Battle 4 Atlantis. If the defense can improve just a little bit they can compete in the Pac-12 but based on Coach Jerod Haase’s tenure thus far, it’s unlikely to occur.