On the Rebound

Imagine what it felt like.

Stanford started 26-0 last season. Then the losses came one after another, like a bad spate of turnovers the players felt powerless to stop.

A loss to Washington in the last regular-season game ended the chance for a perfect record. A second-round loss to Alabama in the NCAA tournament ended the hopes for a national championship.

Then Josh Childress, the Cardinal’s star junior, decided to jump to the NBA.

Then Coach Mike Montgomery did too, leaving for the Golden State Warriors.

Point guard Chris Hernandez suffered for months, wandering around campus constantly reminded of an Alabama game he still hasn’t watched on tape.

“It took probably until I got away from Stanford after summer school, until I could go away and do my own thing. August, maybe,” Hernandez said.

“We all thought that was our year. It was not something we came out and spoke about in the locker room, but you could just look at each other and know we could do it.

“It was such a great team. We definitely underachieved.”

Instead of defending the national championship they all believed they could win -- moving on with Childress and Montgomery still there -- the Cardinal (8-7) already has lost five more games than all last season, when Stanford finished 30-2.

An upset of Arizona and a victory over California helped pull it from the bottom of the Pacific 10 Conference standings. But with guard Matt Lottich and forward Justin Davis gone from last season’s team as well, Stanford comes to Los Angeles this week a very different team. The Cardinal is still adjusting to a new lineup and new Coach Trent Johnson, who took Nevada to the Sweet 16 out of the same Seattle regional where the Cardinal lost.

“Our hotel was right across the street from theirs,” said Johnson, a Stanford assistant from 1996 to 1999. “You saw them, and you could see how frustrated they were with how the year ended. They were still down, and then guys are leaving, Josh is leaving, their coach is gone.

“They were living out of a trailer since February [while their locker room was out of commission during the renovation of Maples Pavilion]. But I never heard a complaint. They’ve been great. All the kids have.”

Stanford kids being Stanford kids, by now they have sorted out last season and are concentrating on this one.

“It’s character-building,” Hernandez said. “You’ve got to look at yourself and realize, ‘Hey, you’re not going to walk on the floor and just win.’ You have to do a lot of little stuff every play and grind it out to get a win.”

One of the players who has emerged in the transition is Dan Grunfeld, a junior guard who has gone from averaging only three points and 11 minutes last season to become the Cardinal’s leading scorer, averaging 18 points.

“Losing is always tough,” Grunfeld said. “We did win a lot of games last year, but you can’t really dwell on the past. Losing always stinks, no matter what.

“It was a disappointing end to the season, but when you look back, we were undefeated so long, and that’s exciting, going into March with a chance to win it all.”

The most unlikely loss since Montgomery left came this month when the Cardinal’s top backup player, guard Tim Morris, was declared academically ineligible, something that hadn’t happened in the program in two decades.

Morris, a pre-med student, failed a course called Human Biology Core, consisting of two five-unit classes that is considered among the most difficult undergraduate offerings at the university.

Without a passing grade in the 10-unit course, Morris fell below the NCAA requirement athletes pass at least six units toward their degree each quarter.

Hernandez took the course earlier in his career.

“The most stressful class I’ve ever taken,” he said, recalling his C-minus. “I worried whether I would pass.”

Stanford took Morris’ case to the NCAA but its appeal was denied Tuesday.

Without Morris, Stanford has only nine scholarship players, many who are adjusting to new roles, as well as a new coach.

“Everybody was really shocked [when Montgomery left.] We didn’t see it coming,” Hernandez said.

Montgomery has had to adjust to losing too. At 12-27 with the Warriors, he has lost 25 times more than last season.

“We were all kind of disappointed,” Hernandez said. “But for me, and I think the team, we could understand where he was coming from.”

Still nearby, Montgomery has attended practice and at least one game.

The players who departed left holes of their own.

“I don’t think we all realized everything the players who are gone brought to the game,” Hernandez said. “With [Childress, Lottich and Davis], I could get them the ball and let them do their thing if I wasn’t playing well. If I wasn’t scoring, I could just set them up and play really good defense.

“And I think we thought, ‘OK, we’ve got a new coach. He’s a great coach and he runs the same stuff, everything will be fine and dandy.’ But I think you look at a lot of programs that go through a coaching change and there is a little adjustment period. I think we’re getting past that. We’re getting all our changing done and we’re getting our own identity.”

After a 0-3 start in Pac-10 play, Stanford has won its last two. Where the Cardinal goes from here is hard to say, but the UCLA and USC games ought to give an indication.

“Are we struggling or are we who we are?” Johnson said. “If Josh Childress hadn’t gone hardship, nobody would be talking about it.”

Johnson, with previous ties to Stanford, hasn’t changed that much. He kept assistants Eric Reveno and Tony Fuller, and if the past is any indication, he’ll recruit Los Angeles well. While he was an assistant, Jason and Jarron Collins and Casey Jacobsen all left the area for Stanford.

There’s a new look in Palo Alto as well, with $25 million in renovations to Maples Pavilion, leaving it nicely updated but not overly lavish.

Two new touches are a student section that doesn’t even have bleacher seating because the students choose to stand the entire game, and a new standard floor. Maples’ quirky springy floor is a thing of the past.

“The bouncy floor was kind of cool, but life will go on,” Grunfeld said.

Just like Stanford basketball.