Ebuka Okorie and Stanford look to extend their winning streak when they host struggling UNLV on Sunday.
Okorie entered Saturday’s play tied for 12th in the country with 21.4 points per game and adds a team-leading 3.1 assists for the Cardinal (7-1), who are 5-1 at home this season.
Chisom Okpara is averaging 15.5 points with 4.5 rebounds, and AJ Rohosy leads the team with 6.0 rebounds to go along with 9.6 points.
Stanford has won three straight games despite a congested schedule and is coming off a dominant 94-72 win against Portland on Monday.
“I felt really good about a lot of things in this game, especially playing our third game in five days and coming off a really emotional win against St. Louis,” Stanford head coach Kyle Smith said. “You never know how exactly how your team’s going to handle it. I thought our guys handled it really well — came out and shot the ball really well.”
Monday’s game saw six Cardinal players score double digits: Jeremy Dent-Smith (16 points), Benny Gealer (15), Oskar Giltay (15), Ryan Agarwal (10) and Okorie (10).
“That’s how you really kind of want to be, the democratization of our point distribution,” Smith said. “Obviously, Ebuka has been tremendous, and I think that’s just the next step. There are some other guys and they’re going to try.”
The Runnin’ Rebels (3-5) are looking to stop a three-game losing skid after dropping games to Maryland, No. 12 Alabama and Rutgers at the Players Era Festival at Las Vegas. UNLV fell 80-65 to Rutgers on Thanksgiving Day.
Al Green, Tyrin Jones, and Kimani Hamilton each scored 13 points for UNLV, which had a 39-33 halftime lead. The Rebels gave up 11-0 run early in the second half and were unable to recover.
“Tough week for sure, but we’ll get better,” UNLV head coach Josh Pastner said. “We need to get healthy, first and foremost. All of our focus and energy will be towards making sure that we are as ready as we can be when we enter conference play in late December.”
