Last week, with most of the campus away on spring break, Stanford athletic director Bernard Muir announced the hiring of Jerod Haase as the program’s new head coach. The acquisition marks the opening of a new chapter for Stanford basketball, which has spent the past eight seasons under the stewardship of former Duke star Johnny Dawkins.

Haase’s name was on few people’s short lists, but the new hire has generally seemed to be well-received amongst the Cardinal fan base. After the never-ending stretch of up-and-down results in the Dawkins era, apparently any new developments became good news.

Whether you loved Dawkins or hated him, it’s undeniable that Stanford basketball has experienced its fair share of problems in recent years. The team, in many ways, became utterly predictable with its end of season struggles and almosts in conference competition. On the court, the Cardinal never embarrassed themselves but rarely showed the power to shock friends and foes with surprise surges.

It wasn’t that there weren’t any highs. Shawn Tuteja wrote an excellent piece last year on the many ways in which Stanford basketball has succeeded over the past years, both on and off the court. But instead of perpetually demanding to reach new levels, the program seemed to stagnate, repeating its previous accomplishments but rarely showing signs of continuous, sustained improvement. As the team’s coinhabitants at Maples made bursts of noise, men’s basketball stayed comparatively quiet.

Nothing about this state of affairs was deplorable, but it’s hard to blame the Stanford fan base for losing interest in the team as its course oscillated in this narrow range of achievement. Dawkins was instructed to change the state of affairs and, when he largely failed to, was shown the door.

Haase now inherits a program with plenty of talent but no clear way to use it. In some ways, the coach has been in this situation before. When Haase took over at UAB, he inherited a program that had seen some relatively recent successes but was coming off a season that didn’t shatter many records.

Haase turned around the program, slowly at first, but eventually was able to lead it to an NCAA Tournament and a Conference USA regular season title. He also managed to briefly put his program into the national spotlight when the team knocked off No. 3-seeded Iowa State in the 2015 tournament, busting a number of brackets (including that of this Daily editor) in the process. Haase showed proficiency both on offense and defense, holding the Cyclones to almost 20 points below their season average while also getting his guys to score – and, importantly, to pass – as well as anyone in Conference USA.

There’s nothing on Haase’s record to suggest he’s the next Mike Krzyzewski, but his coaching credentials equal if not exceed those of Dawkins when he took the Stanford job. His name may not generate as much excitement – Haase has nowhere near the name recognition of Dawkins – but, by and large, he’s done well with what he’s been given.

Stanford fans will – and in many ways already have – go back and forth about whether Haase is an upgrade on Dawkins. As of yet, there’s no clear evidence to point in either direction. There’s little Haase could do to immediately quiet Dawkins’s supporters, many of whom expected Stanford to challenge for the Pac-12 title in the 2016-17 season under its old coach. A couple years in the NIT – realistically about the worst case scenario for Stanford’s future – would hardly seem to be a disaster given the team’s recent record.

What Haase – and, indeed, any coaching change – brings, however, is a break from the status quo. New coaches bring new strategies, ideas and expectations. Some of these changes might shift the course of the program, while others will hardly do anything at all.

With the change, however, comes excitement, something that has recently been missing from Stanford basketball. The blend of excitement that comes with Haase may not be the same as if Stanford had somehow pried Tony Bennett from Virginia, but it still causes fans to open their eyes and re-engage with the program. The proliferation of conversation about Stanford basketball in recent days may not seem that important, but the fact of the matter is that it’s caused many people who had rarely comment on men’s basketball to feel the need to share their voice.

This minor revamp may not be everything that Stanford needs to return to the days of Mike Montgomery. The team may never regain that status.

But without this change, how would it ever start?

 

Remind Andrew Mather that this is the third straight column on Jerod Haase and there is no need to keep beating a dead horse at amather ‘at’ stanford.edu.