Coaches who were former Pac-12 Conference rivals will attempt to continue successful first-year runs with new teams when Stanford faces SMU at Dallas in an Atlantic Coast Conference matchup on Saturday night.
Former Washington State coach Kyle Smith has led Stanford (15-6, 7-3 ACC) into the upper tier of the ACC standings.
Meanwhile, former Southern California coach Andy Enfield has done the same at SMU (16-5, 7-3) as he, like Smith, attempts to guide his new team back into the NCAA Tournament after a long drought.
Stanford, which hasn’t participated in March Madness since 2014, already has surpassed its win total of each of the last two seasons, when the Cardinal went 14-19 and 14-18 under Jerod Haase.
The Cardinal ran their winning streak to four games with a 70-61 home victory over Syracuse on Wednesday. Stanford is in a three-way tie (with SMU and Wake Forest) for fourth place in the ACC.
The Mustangs are attempting to end a seven-year absence from the NCAA Tournament. They have won five of their past six games, most recently recording a 76-65 home triumph over Cal on Wednesday.
The Cardinal and Mustangs will be meeting as ACC rivals for the first time.
Stanford star Maxime Raynaud led the way against Syracuse with 21 points and 15 rebounds. The Cardinal led 25-2 with about 11 minutes left in the first half, but Syracuse whittled its deficit to six with just over three minutes left in the game.
The late-game challenge could turn into a positive moving forward, according to Raynaud, a native of France.
“I think it was a teaching moment — a teaching moment more than a frustrating moment,” Raynaud said of Syracuse’s comeback. “It’s really good that we face that now (rather) than later in the season. We knew they were a really good team. Gotta learn from it. Gotta learn from it.”
SMU will counter Raynaud with a double-double threat of its own in Matt Cross, who had 15 points and 14 rebounds in the win over Cal. It was his sixth double-double of the season and second in two games, after he posted 11 points and 10 boards in a win at North Carolina State on Jan. 25.
Cross was filling a void created by the absence of SMU big man Samet Yigitoglu, who sustained a shoulder injury as the result of hard fouls late against NC State.
Yigitoglu, just a 62.5 percent free-throw shooter, responded to those fouls by making four straight from the line in the final two minutes to secure a 63-57 win.
“Very proud of him to go under pressure like that,” Enfield said of the 7-foot-2 freshman from Turkey. “The fans were booing him, and he was able to step up and make all four.”
