After playing competitively against the defending national champions, Oakland continues its ambitious non-conference schedule with a trip to Stanford on Friday night.
The Golden Grizzlies (0-1) begin a two-game California swing starting with a Stanford squad that struggled Monday to put away Eastern Washington 74-65 in its season opener at home.
Oakland got a game-high 18 points and 10 rebounds from Chris Fields Jr. and 16 points from Nassim Mashhour in an 84-68 loss at No. 16 Michigan on Monday.
The Golden Grizzlies led by as many as five, outplayed the Wolverines for the first 10 minutes and hung around until deep in the second half in Ann Arbor.
After getting his first look at a group that will play five road games against non-conference teams currently ranked in the Top 25, Oakland coach Greg Kampe was particularly impressed with how his guys battled Michigan on the glass.
“We outrebounded the defending national champions (44-42) in their house and had 21 offensive rebounds; that’s something to like,” he said. “We shot more free throws than they shot (30-20). That’s something that we want to be a staple of our defense and we just did that. At Michigan.”
Meanwhile, Stanford (1-0) also had to work for its season-opening victory, getting outrebounded 32-26 and outscored 15-13 at the foul line.
Julius Price paced a balanced Cardinal attack with 17 points in his collegiate debut. Aziz Olajuwon had 12 points and six steals.
Stanford shot 54.9% from the field, making 23 of its 31 attempts (74.2%) from inside the 3-point arc.
Third-year Stanford coach Kyle Smith expects his guys to be more relaxed now that they have a win under their belts.
“We’re really nervous, we’re tight,” he said of Monday’s start. “I was worried we couldn’t make a basket. We turned it over and a lot of it I thought was just really jittery. Then our defense kind of picked it up and we calmed down a little bit.”
