No Problem For No. 9 Stanford

It was little more than a warmup for Saturday's showdown against No. 2 Auburn.

Freshman Casey Jacobsen had 15 points and No. 9 Stanford opened a 27-point halftime lead in a 72-31 win Wednesday night over Cal-State Bakersfield, playing a Division I opponent for the first time in 13 years.

Ryan Mendez added 13 points as Stanford (4-0) got in a light workout in preparation for the battle against Auburn at the John Wooden Classic in Anaheim.

"They weren't as good as I expected. Things are going to be a lot different against Auburn," Stanford coach Mike Montgomery said. "They thought they could go to their big men, but that just didn't work against us. Our inside guys dominated them."

"This was a good test for us before Auburn, because this is the same type of team as Auburn physical but on a different level," Jacobsen said. "Auburn is not going to try to outfinesse us, they're going to try to bowl us over."

Ron Selleaze had 12 points for CS Bakersfield (1-2), which has never beaten a Pac-10 opponent. Lovell Brown, the Roadrunners' top scorer last season, returned from an ankle sprain but was held scoreless in 13 minutes.

"I think we wore ourselves out on defense against them, and that affected us in our offensive patterns," CS-Bakersfield coach Henry Clark said. "We couldn't set up as well as we would like. We seemed to get the open shots, but nothing went down. And they shot very well from the outside, especially Mendez."

The Cardinal played without Mark Madsen, who strained his right hamstring ithe second half of a season-opening win over Duke in the Coaches vs. Cancer Tournament at Madison Square Garden in New York. Madsen has not played since that game, and is expected to be sidelined through at least mid-December.

But Stanford hardly missed Madsen, as twins Jarron and Jason Collins dominated the middle and the Cardinal made six 3-pointers in the first half to build a 42-15 halftime lead.

Stanford scored the first seven points of the game and held CS-Bakersfield without a basket for the opening 4:06, building a 12-3 lead during that time. The Cardinal led 21-11 midway through the first half, then used an 18-0 run to blow the game open.

CS-Bakersfield went scoreless for 7:02 during that run, which began with Julius Barnes and David Moseley hitting 3-pointers and included two straight 3-pointers by Jacobsen, who was making his home debut.

Stanford extended its lead to as many as 42 points in the second half.

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