Stanford leans on new faces in opener vs. Eastern Washington

Stanford Cardinal enters its opener against visiting Eastern Washington Eagles on Monday with its top five scorers gone from last year's 20-win team.

This situation has third-year Cardinal coach Kyle Smith experiencing a strong case of dejà vu -- and it will be a welcome one if it means Stanford has another brilliant newcomer like Ebuka Okorie, who led the Atlantic Coast Conference with an average of 23.2 points per game before being a one-and-done to the NBA.

"I stood here 12 months ago," Smith said, "and we'd lost our top four scorers I think, maybe five, and I didn't know where we were coming from, and somehow we were sitting on the top scorer in the league."

Will the Cardinal (20-13 last season) have another terrific freshman or two this season? Well, in Stanford's 83-78 exhibition loss at Santa Clara on Oct. 17, 6-foot-3 freshman Julius Price led the way with 26 points. In Stanford's subsequent exhibition loss at Oregon, Top 100 recruit Aziz Olajuwon -- yes, the son of Hakeem Olajuwon -- led the way with 16 points on 5-for-11 shooting from 3-point range and nine rebounds.

For now, though, the Cardinal are led by the two returnees from last year's rotation: junior forwards Aidan Cammann (6.5 ppg, 3.8 rpg) and Donavin Young (2.5 ppg, 2.7 rpg).

"But we're a really unselfish group," Smith said. "(Cammann and Young) make the extra pass. This should be our best group that way. These guys are really great two-way players."

Young also started both exhibition games, as did Delaware transfer Christian Bliss. Cammann started the first one while Nick Townsend, the 2026 Ivy League Player of the Year who spent the past four years at Yale, started the other.

Meanwhile, Eastern Washington brings back two starters from a squad that finished 14-19 last year but won eight Big Sky games in a row in February to build momentum for this year.

Second-team All-Big Sky forward Alton Hamilton IV (13.5 ppg, 5.7 rpg) and 6-10 forward Emmett Marquardt (5.5 ppg) lead last season's returnees, but the Eagles have a big X-factor on their roster.

Sixth-year guard Andrew Cook, who averaged 15.8 points for Eastern Washington in 2024-25, missed last year with an ankle injury but received a preliminary injunction to return this season in an eligibility ruling.

"It was a long, winding road," associate head coach Ryan Lundgren told The Spokesman-Review. "It's been a really heavy weight for the last 11 months since the injury."

Cook, who scored 26 points in the Eagles' 71-65 exhibition win against CSU Bakersfield on Oct. 18, joined Hamilton on the Big Sky's preseason all-league team. Big Sky coaches and media picked the Eagles to finish third this season.

--Field Level Media