Jan 24th, 2010
Green-Fields sound like an environmental group (Green Fields called for a halt to off-shore oil-drilling) or a retirement home (enjoy your golden years at Green Fields) or a cemetery plot (spend eternity at peaceful Green Fields), but for Stanford basketball, Green-Fields has been an unexpected means to unexpected success.
Landry Fields scored 32 points on Saturday on just 15 field-goal attempts -- Photo by Liz Hafilia/San Francisco Chronicle
After Stanford’s Landry Fields and Jeremy Green combined to average 19.0 points last season, no one could have anticipated that they would become the top scoring combination in the Pac-10 this season.
But after Fields scored a career-high 32 points and Green added 25 points in Saturday’s 84-69 victory over Oregon at Maples Pavilion, it has become impossible to ignore the impact those two are having.
Fields is averaging 21.8 points and Green 17.5, and their 39.3 combined scoring is the highest two-man scoring average in the Pac-10, just ahead of the 37.1 average of Washington’s Quincy Pondexter and Isaiah Thomas.
What’s more, Stanford is one of just six Division I teams that have two players averaging 17.5 points or more, the others being Washington, Duke, New Mexico State, South Florida and IUPUI. (Ten bucks says you don’t know what IUPUI stands for, although you may have surmised it is Division I’s only palindrome.)
But none of those tandems has done more for its team than Green and Fields, who have lifted the short-handed Cardinal (10-9, 4-3 in the Pac-10) into a five-way tie for second place after being picked to finish last.
Despite being down to six scholarship players, the Cardinal won their two games this week primarily because of the offense of Fields and Green.
Fields has scored at least 14 points in every game this season, and after being held under his season average in each of Stanford’s first six Pac-10 games, he erupted for the biggest game of his career against the Ducks, surpassing his previous career high by five points.
He scored his 32 points on just 15 field-goal attempts, only one of which was a three-point try (which he missed). Fields scored nearly half his points on free throws, and when he is getting to the foul line it indicates he is being aggressive and driving toward the basket, which is when he is most effective. He shot 19 free throws on Saturday and has attempted 159 for the season, the most in the Pac-10 and seventh most in the country. And that not only gives Fields and Stanford chances for easy points but it also puts opposing teams in foul trouble.
Fields might make better use of his trips to the foul line if he could improve his percentage. His 71.7 free-throw shooting is not bad and is an improvement over last season, but he has the stroke to shoot considerably better.
Green should be able to improve his foul shooting too. His 75 percent free-throw percentage is not bad, but a guy with Green’s long-range accuracy should be hitting better than 80 percent from the line. That’s nitpicking, because Green has scored 23 points or more in four of the Cardinal’s first seven conference games. In Stanford’s past 14 games, he has been held under 13 points only once, and it’s no coincidence that the Cardinal got clobbered in the lone exception – a seven-point game by Green in the 33-point loss to Washington.
Green is hitting 41.3 percent of his three-pointers, which is pretty good, but it seems like he’s making a higher percentage than that. Perhaps that’s because he attempts shots from so far out, often making three-pointers from the 28-foot range without effort. He made 3 of 4 three-point attempts against the Ducks, and said afterward that his range begins as soon as he crosses halfcourt.
Stanford can expect to see more gimmick defenses over the remainder of the Pac-10 season in an attempt to shut down Fields and Green. James Madison had success with a triangle-and-two defense when it played the Cardinal, and Stanford may have to learn to deal with those kinds of defenses if it hopes to continues its surprising success.
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