It’s Heaven With Brevin : Diminutive Knight Guides Stanford’s Second-Half Run Through Pac-10 Conference

PALO ALTO —  If Brevin Knight sometimes grimaces and sags as if the weight of the Stanford basketball program was on his shoulders, well, it’s because sometimes it is.

Most times, actually.

He’s 5 feet 10, 173 pounds if you’re being generous, and darts around the court in a thick, full-length leg brace to ease the aggravation to a minor stress fracture.

But as further evidenced by his 19-point, nine-assist performance in a crucial 67-66 victory Saturday against UCLA, a team that had held him in check in five previous games, the emotional junior point guard is the standard-bearer.

No matter how many talented players Stanford Coach Mike Montgomery surrounds him with, Knight, as he has been since his freshman season, is the focus and the fire of everything the Cardinal does.

“He doesn’t know it, but all the players do look toward Brevin for leadership,” senior swingman David Harbour said. “It was really evident in a couple games when things weren’t going well for Brevin from the start, and I could see that it carried over to the entire team. Everybody else was moping around doing the same thing.

“They all look toward him because he is such a great player, people have so much respect for the way he plays.”

The Knight influence--dark and stormy or light and explosive--on Stanford was never more obvious than a week ago Sunday, when the Cardinal faced Seton Hall, which happens to be the school where Knight’s father played and coached, the school that still employs his mother and the school Knight always assumed he’d attend.

Seton Hall, along with most of the schools in the nation, chose not to recruit Knight, who was always considered too small and frail, so Knight ended up at Stanford, where his speed and attacking nature has lifted him to a place among the top point guards in the nation.

In Knight’s freshman season, Stanford played at Seton Hall, Knight struggled, and Stanford lost, 75-69.

This season, an obviously pressing Knight missed his first few shots, turned the ball over a few times, then picked up two quick fouls and sat the final few minutes of the half.

“He wasn’t moping, but he wasn’t Brevin,” Harbour said.

Then came the second half, when Knight made a shot and a pretty pass on the fastbreak, then it was off to the races, and the Cardinal was barreling to an 83-60 victory.

“Once he made that first shot in the second half, the smile came back, and you could tell he was back going again,” Montgomery said. “He’s always been a team player, and the fact that we won by 23, I think, was very gratifying for him for everybody else to see: ‘Hey, here I am. This is my program, this is what we’re able to do.’ ”

Knight, who finished with 13 points and nine assists, acknowledges he feels responsible for everything that happens to Stanford--and that he was especially sensitive playing Seton Hall on national television in a game that would lift Stanford’s power rating and its national presence.

“I might’ve put on a little bit of pressure to perform better than the first time we played them--I didn’t play well at all, and we lost,” Knight said. “So, I had really two things to accomplish. And I did both. I did what I had to do for our team to win.”

The interesting part is that this was supposed to be the season when Stanford didn’t depend on Knight for all its shining moments. Outside shooter Dion Cross, Harbour and big men Andy Poppink and Darren Allaway were all seniors, and smooth 7-1 Tim Young was coming off a strong freshman season.

The centerpiece was Young, and Knight could take advantage of the openings Young created. Then Young was diagnosed with a bad disk in his back in December--Stanford probably will use a medical redshirt year for him--and the plans all came crashing down.

Instead of going big, Stanford has had to put the 6-3 Harbour into a starting spot, and move the 6-7 Poppink from a wing to the post.

“When it happened, I said, ‘Dawg, we could’ve been so good,’ ” Knight said. “It was like oh, we worked so hard to get to this point. It’s almost like starting over again.”

The Cardinal, which stumbled in the early season against San Francisco even with Young in the lineup, got off to a quick conference start without him--sweeping the Arizona schools at Maples Pavilion. But the ensuing trip to Los Angeles, where the Cardinal lost to UCLA and USC, was an eye-opener.

Knight, in particular, felt the heat for those losses, since he performed well in neither--making only 10 of 30 shots--and the offensive flow was nonexistent.

Knight publicly took the blame for the defeats, and recommitted himself to taking over.

“I have a lot of respect for him,” Cal Coach Todd Bozeman said. “I thought [Knight’s actions after the L.A. losses] was a great example of the type player and person he is. He took a lot of responsibility for their trip down in L.A. and came back and responded in a big way. I used that as example to my team, because he took responsibility and responded.

“He’s a big-time player.”

The difference? Knight said that, instead of easing into the game by dishing it off to everybody else--as he might have if Young were still playing--it was time to go straight to the hoop as fast as he could.

“I wanted to become more of a force early in the game,” Knight said. “I didn’t want to wait until the second half or late in the first half to try to take advantage of situations or try to force things for myself. At times, I was waiting until the second half to wait for my opportunities. And Coach told me, you know, I have to go out there and be aggressive from the beginning. And if I’m aggressive from the beginning, that can only help others down the road.”

Immediately, the team responded. Since losing to USC on Jan. 13, Stanford has gone 7-1 (the only loss coming at Washington), including a big road victory at Washington State, a blistering 93-79 home-court triumph over California, in which Knight scored 29 points, had 13 assists and grabbed eight rebounds, and a 30-point pummeling of the Trojans on Thursday, leading into Saturday’s victory. The Cardinal is now 15-5 and 8-3, second in the Pac-10 behind UCLA.

Knight, who had only nine combined assists against the Bruins and Trojans, has averaged almost eight a game since the L.A. sweep, and, over the season, Knight leads the conference, averaging 7.6 assists.

“They always tell me, as I go, we go,” Knight said. “If I play hard, since I’m at front all the time, offensively or defensively, they see me playing hard, that translates into how they’re playing.

“I try to bring that energy to the team. And if I want to bring that energy, I have to do it as soon as the ball’s thrown up.”

For the Cardinal, last weekend’s theme was inscribed on their team-room board: “USC plus UCLA equals payback times two.”

After completing the sweep on Saturday, Knight savored the moment.

“It means a lot. We got back two games. We wanted to come back and have a better second half than our first half, and to do that, you have to beat the teams that beat you. And we’ve done that, twice. We’re where we want to be now, we just have to keep winning.”