Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins may not be the unluckiest man in college basketball right now, but with the way his luck is turning, he can probably get the poor sap that is to buy him a beer.On the day Dawkins received a verbal commitment from the prize of his 2010 recruiting class, the second-year Cardinal coach watched Andy Brown, the star of the 2009 class go down with a knee injury. Monday night, the school confirmed that the ACL tear will cost Brown the season.
"This is an unfortunate loss for our program and I know how much of a disappointment this is for Andy," Dawkins said. "Andy had worked very hard leading up to the start of practice and we were expecting him to contribute this year. I wish him well in his recovery and look forward to having him back next season."
For Brown, a mobile 6-foot-8 forward who starred at Southern California basketball power Mater Dei, the injury was the second ACL tear in 10 months.
For Stanford, an all-but-certain shoo-in for the back of the line in Pac-10 predictions, it was another blow to the immediate future of the program.
Without Brown, the Cardinal are jersey-thin in the front court. Only Josh Owens, a 6-foot-8 junior who started 28 games last year but averaged only 6.9 points per game, is a threat in the frontcourt.
Stanford's depth elsewhere isn't much better.
The Cardinal lost three starters from last year's squad 20-14 team, including team MVPs Anthony Goods and Lawrence Hill (one of that duo led Stanford in scoring in 30 of 34 contests last year), and Mitch Johnson, a four-year fixture at point guard.
Complicating matters on The Farm is that all that talent going out hasn't been replaced by talent coming in, at least not yet. Brown comprised a third of Dawkins' first recruiting class. The only other freshman, Gabriel Harris, was expected to be the replacement for Johnson, but arthriscopic knee surgery in the offseason will likely slow that succession plan. The third member of the class, Andrew Zimmerman, has size at 6-foot-9, but redshirted last season at a junior college after transfing from Santa Clara, where he averaged less than two points a game as a freshman.
Meanwhile, the starter in the middle should've been Miles Plumlee, but the would-be sophomore opted out of his commitment when coach Trent Johnson left for LSU, ironically signing with Duke, where Dawkins served as an assistant before accepting the Stanford job.
If there's a silver lining, it may be that it forces Dawkins' hand in building a more up-tempo attack out of Mike Krzyzewski's playbook, with the four-perimeter player sets the Blue Devils have employed off and on over the past dozen years.
And the future is brighter for the Cardinal. Dawkins has secured four verbal commitments for 2010, all ranked in the top 40 at their position by Scout.
But their arrival is one, possibly painful year away.
Right now, Dawkins would probably be happy making it to the season opener with the rest of his roster intact.
Of course, even the opener seems fittingly ominous. The date of the Cardinal's first game? Friday, the 13th.
Some guys have all the luck.
