CARDINAL JEWEL

Stanford has hit the big time, and now let’s see if the big time hits back.

After a careful, decade-long journey, the elements and the instruments have come together for Coach Mike Montgomery and his Cardinal basketball team, seizing the attention of a Bay Area sports populace suddenly searching for a winner with postseason staying power:

The land is soaked and sloppy, the San Francisco 49ers have been flushed out of the playoffs, the glorious Stanford women’s team just lost its first conference game in years, the men are 14-0 and have risen to No. 7 in the nation, and the Los Angeles schools are coming to town.

Does the serious part of a run to the Final Four start here?

“What happens as much as anything else,” Montgomery said this week, when asked about the perfect record during his coy, 40-minute meeting with the media, “is you deal with different expectations.

“More people come to your press conference and ask questions,” before teasingly adding, “provided the football season is over.”

As the Cardinal prepares to host USC on Thursday, and No. 8 UCLA on Saturday, there has not been a more optimistic time for men’s basketball at Stanford since the national title in 1942, never been a more resounding sense that this is only the middle part of something triumphant.

And it’s time to start showing it, on national television and at the top of the Bay Area papers, the bigger the stage the better.

“Definitely--we’re a program on the rise,” said Jarron Collins, the talented backup freshman forward from North Hollywood Harvard-Westlake whose arrival, along with his twin brother, Jason, heralded a new recruiting era for the Cardinal.

“We go deep into the bench, there have been games where we’ve gone 12 deep. We have the personnel to do it. We’re one of the tallest and strongest teams in the nation. We’ve got a lot of good players here. And we’re a young team. We’ve only got two seniors on the team.”

So often, all discussions about Stanford success were with individual caveats. The Cardinal was good when it had Todd Lichti in the late ‘80s, when it had Adam Keefe in the early ‘90s, and made three consecutive NCAA tournament trips with Brevin Knight, the last one last season when Knight led Stanford to the Sweet 16.

Between superstars, Stanford deflated.

But the spectacular Knight is gone to the NBA now, no true marquee superstar has emerged, and yet Stanford’s players do not deny that the team is better--and deeper, more consistent and more versatile--than it was a year ago.

Add this: With only two seniors (neither an impact player) on this season’s team, it’ll probably be even better next year.

While UCLA will lose J.R. Henderson, Toby Bailey, Kris Johnson and possibly Jelani McCoy, and Arizona will lose Miles Simon, Michael Dickerson and possibly Mike Bibby, Stanford will have its top nine scorers returning.

“Yeah, we’re a program,” said Jarron Collins, investing a great deal of meaning in that word, as if it alone lifted Stanford into the stratosphere of Duke, UCLA, North Carolina or Arizona. “And that’s what programs do.”

This is a power team whose 7-footer, Tim Young, is the fourth-leading scorer (at 10.9 a game), whose depth is so great that no player has logged more than 360 minutes (UCLA has four players over 435 in the same number of games), whose most active player, power forward Mark Madsen, has sat out the last three games because of a stress fracture and will sit out at least three or four more, and whose defense is bruising enough to be holding opponents to 38.8% field-goal shooting.

This is a team that hasn’t yet faced any major national-title contenders, but has already beaten Rhode Island and Georgia, bulldozed both Oregon schools on the road by a combined 42 points, and beat California at home by 10.

This is a team assured of an NCAA tournament spot, a team that is a dangerous equal of UCLA and Arizona as the elite three joust for the league title and probably a No. 1 seeding in the West Regional.

Stanford hosts Arizona on Jan. 29 before traveling to UCLA on Feb. 12, then goes to Arizona on Feb. 28.

“I mean, we knew we were going to be good, tell you the truth,” said Arthur Lee, the North Hollywood High product who was Knight’s understudy for two years and has ably stepped into his point guard role, averaging 11.1 points and 4.5 assists. “Everybody else on the outside, they didn’t know exactly what was going to happen.

“We lost Brevin, that was a big loss. But we definitely knew we were going to be a contender. We had to go out and prove it, and we’re still proving it.”

Proving it to the nation, to the student body, and to an area that has provided a lot of support to the perennially powerful women’s team.

“It’s kind of hard to be in the same place as them,” junior forward Pete Sauer said. “I mean, they’ve got two [national title] banners up here. They’ve always been kind of the premier program.

“Now, we’re starting to catch up a little bit.”

Right now, though Stanford can go to Young for points and has gone to Madsen on the lower post before his injury, junior guard Kris Weems seems to be developing into someone who can create his own shot when the clock is ticking down and the middle is clogged.

Weems, averaging a team-high 13.9 points, lit up Oregon for 34, and, as opposed to last season when he basically stayed outside the three-point line and watched Knight bolt through defenses, this season he is doing more than stand.

“I’m starting to be more assertive and do some things I didn’t do last year,” Weems said. “Just taking the ball to the hole and being more aggressive, try to get to the free-throw line, whereas last year I was more content shooting jumpers and coming off screens.

“Now, I’m starting to demand the ball later in the game, which I didn’t do last year because we always had Brevin.”

Though Montgomery avoids putting too much significance on the twin signings, the day the Collins brothers committed to Stanford was a hugely significant and symbolic moment.

In one fell swoop, that one decision by 6-foot-10 Jason and 6-9 Jarron not only denied UCLA and Arizona (who both at different times thought they were near landing the brothers) a center-forward combination into the next millennium, it registered Montgomery and the Cardinal as major players in the talent-rich L.A. recruiting area.

“Why would Mike want to take the UCLA job,” joked one of his associates last year, when the Bruin job was open and Montgomery’s name had been mentioned to fill it, “when he’s already getting the players they want?”

That Stanford has barreled on this season without much from either--Jason is returning this week from arthroscopic knee surgery after sitting out all but the first game of the season; Jarron struggled with an early ankle injury and only after Madsen’s injury started getting good playing time--is almost secondary.

“The Collins were visible kids, they played in all the best places in the tournaments in the summer . . . and big people are always a premium,” Montgomery said. “These kids were the most visible kids and had been for a number of years, which is what the recruiting thing is kind of about.”

Certainly, that’s what the Duke recruiting superpower is all about--great players who are also good students are drawn there by the academics and the ability to play in the Final Four.

Maybe that’s where the Cardinal is headed, West Coast-style.

“I don’t have to have my lock-cutters to get in,” Montgomery joked about recruiting visits now that Stanford is an NCAA tournament regular. “They actually answer the doorbell.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Cardinal Wins

If Stanford defeats USC tonight, it will set team records for best start to a season and longest season winning streak. A look:

Best starts in Stanford history:

*--*

Start Year Record 14-0 1936-37 25-2 11-0 1920-21 15-3 10-0 1994-95 20-9 10-0 1948-49 19-9 9-0 1924-25 10-3 9-0 1951-52 19-9 9-0 1953-54 13-10 8-0 1918-19 9-3 8-0 1989-90 18-12

*--*

Best single-season winning streaks:

*--*

Streak Year Record 14 1936-37 25-2 14 1937-38 21-3 13 1941-42 28-4 12 1940-41 21-5 11 1920-21 15-3 11 1922-23 12-4 11 1988-89 26-7 10 1994-95 20-9 10 1948-49 19-9

*--*