SETTING THE SCENE
The final game of the 2025-26 regular season is set for Saturday, March 7 in Raleigh, as Stanford men’s basketball squares off with NC State at 11:15 a.m. PT. The action will be broadcast on The CW.<\/p>\n
THE STARTING FIVE THIRD STRAIGHT WIN COMES AT NOTRE DAME OKORIE: ONE OF ONE Okorie has toppled the Stanford freshman scoring record three times this season. First, he broke the standard with 32 points against Colorado (Dec. 20) and then topped his own mark with 36 points against North Carolina (Jan. 14). Scoring 40 points against Georgia Tech (Feb. 7), Okorie became the first Stanford player with a 40-point game since Casey Jacobsen scored 41 on Feb. 7, 2002 vs. Oregon, and Okorie\u2019s performance is the ninth in program history with at least 40 points. He was just the fifth (now six) freshman in ACC history to score 40 points in a game, joining Cooper Flagg, Tyler Hansbrough, Harrison Barnes and Olivier Hanlan, and since, Mikel Brown Jr. The last ACC freshmen guards to average at least 20 points per game were Kenny Anderson (Georgia Tech, 1989-90) and Mark Price (Georgia Tech, 1982-83).<\/p>\n Okorie’s six 30-point games are tied for second most by any freshman in ACC history, just one away from matching Marvin Bagley III (Duke) in 2017-18. Okorie also co-leads the country in games with 25 or more points, along with Dybantsa.<\/p>\n ACC SCHOLAR-ATHLETE OF THE YEAR Gealer is Stanford men\u2019s basketball\u2019s sixth consecutive Scholar-Athlete of the Year, as Stanford won the final four Pac-12 awards in the category and Maxime Raynaud<\/a> won the award in 2025 from the ACC. In addition to Raynaud, Gealer joins Oscar da Silva<\/a> (2021), Sam Beskind<\/a> (2022), James Keefe<\/a> (2023) and Brandon Angel<\/a> (2024), extending the program\u2019s streak, and he becomes the 10th recipient of the honor from either conference, along with Dorian Pickens<\/a> (2018), Chasson Randle<\/a> (2015), Dwight Powell<\/a> (2014) and Landry Fields (2010). The men\u2019s basketball program becomes the first of Stanford\u2019s 36 teams to win six consecutive scholar-athlete of the year honors, dating back to the award\u2019s inception in the Pac-10 in 2007-08.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SETTING THE SCENEThe final game of the 2025-26 regular season is set for Saturday, March 7 in Raleigh,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":521531,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85],"class_list":["post-521530","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=521530"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/521530\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/521531"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=521530"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=521530"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=521530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2022 Stanford is out to a 19-11 start and 8-9 mark in the ACC, including four quadrant one NET victories against then-No. 14\/15 North Carolina, No. 16\/13 Louisville, Saint Louis and at Virginia Tech.
\u2022 Ebuka Okorie<\/a> ranks fifth in the country in scoring at 22.8 points per game and second among freshmen, behind only BYU’s AJ Dybantsa, and he leads the ACC in scoring, just above Duke’s Cameron Boozer. Named to the top-10 lists for national freshman of the year by ESPN, Bleacher Report, Field of 68 and Hoops HQ, Okorie was added to the Naismith Trophy Late-Season Team on Feb. 19.
\u2022 Stanford won the Acrisure Invitational in Palm Desert with wins over Minnesota and Saint Louis, with Benny Gealer<\/a>‘s buzzer beater on Nov. 28 sending the Cardinal home victorious.
\u2022 Making its case for an at-large bid, Stanford is one of only 26 teams nationwide that has at least four quadrant one wins, with two in quadrant 1A, as well as a .500 or better record in quadrants one and two.
\u2022\u00a0 Maxime Raynaud<\/a> graduated from Stanford in 2025 after posting one of the top seasons in program history, and the All-American was drafted by the Sacramento Kings in June. Stanford’s NBA alumni are shining above expectations, with Raynaud scoring 10.7 points per game, Ziaire Williams<\/a> 9.3, Brook Lopez 7.4, Spencer Jones<\/a> 5.8, and Dwight Powell<\/a> 3.3. The double-double king at Stanford, with 25 in a single-season last year, Raynaud leads all NBA rookies with 13 double-doubles this season.<\/p>\n
Stanford opened March with a victory on the road at Notre Dame, 86-78, on March 4. The ACC’s leading scorer, Ebuka Okorie<\/a>, paced the offense with 24 points and seven assists, finishing 10-for-19 from the floor with a trio of 3-pointers. Jeremy Dent-Smith<\/a> set a new season high with 21 points, going 6-for-7 from the floor and 5-for-6 from beyond the arc, including the dagger 3-pointer in the game\u2019s final minute. Stanford shot 57.1 percent from the floor as a team and 52.2 percent from beyond the arc with 12 makes.<\/p>\n
Ebuka Okorie<\/a> has dazzled for the Cardinal this season with averages of 22.8 points, 3.6 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 1.6 steals per game. Okorie ranks fifth nationally in scoring and second among freshmen, trailing only BYU’s AJ Dybantsa nationally, and he leads the ACC, just ahead of Duke’s Cameron Boozer. Okorie became the first Stanford freshman with four-straight 20-point games since Brook Lopez from Feb. 15-24, 2007, and the first Stanford player with back-to-back 30-point games since Landry Fields from Jan. 23-28, 2010. He would be the first freshman to meet his averages in points, rebounds, assists and steals since Oklahoma’s Trae Young and Howard’s RJ Cole in 2017-18.<\/p>\n
Finding success on the court and in the classroom, Benny Gealer<\/a> was named the Skip Prosser Award recipient as the ACC Scholar-Athlete of the Year.<\/p>\n