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A party 57 years overdue: Stanford belts Arizona for title

STANFORD -- Boy, when these guys decide to seize a moment, they don't kid around. One little fairy tale wanders into the room, and suddenly you can't loosen Stanford's grip with a crowbar.

Here was Mike Montgomery, the duke of dapper, cavorting about Maples Pavilion in a backward baseball cap. Here was 6-foot-9 Mark Madsen, heaving his 235 pounds into a mosh pit of Stanford students, literally getting carried away in the swelling emotion.

Here was the sixth-ranked Cardinal, with an opportunity it hadn't seen in 57 years, running and gunning and diving and just brazenly mugging No. 7 Arizona, 98-83, while 7,391 delirious folks danced in the Maples aisles.

Here was the Pacific-10 Conference championship, landing in a place it had never, ever been: Stanford's trophy case.

"The whole thing was just so appropriate," coach Montgomery said, his vocal cords raspy from emotion and abuse. "It was Arizona. It was at home. It was Senior Night. The whole script was set up for us, and this was as good as we could have done it."

Perhaps Stanford (24-5, 14-2) had been bottling its best for precisely this moment. Two days after being taken to overtime by Arizona State, the Cardinal blew to a 20-point lead over the Wildcats in just 16 minutes.

Point guard Arthur Lee, struggling with his shooting touch throughout the conference season, erupted for a career-high 29 points and dealt eight assists. Off guard Kris Weems scored 17 of his 23 in the first half, drilling five three-pointers before intermission and six overall.

It was the Stanford men like you've rarely seen them, angry and hungry and cutthroat. It added up to Stanford men's basketball's first conference title of any kind since 1963, and its first outright conference crown since 1942.

"It's the best feeling I've ever had," said Lee, who -- if memory serves -- led Stanford to the Final Four a year ago. "We've talked about this day for so long."

Not as long as some Stanford alums, surely. None of these Stanford players were alive the last time Stanford had a piece of a conference title. Back in 1963, some team named the Indians went 7-5 to tie UCLA atop the Athletic Association of Western Universities.

And even Montgomery, who turned 52 on Saturday, wasn't on the planet the last time Stanford owned a conference title outright. That happened in 1942, when those Indians won the Pacific Coast Conference title on the way to a national title.

We can only presume that the 1942 celebration was a bit tamer than the 1999 version. Saturday, with the Sixth Man student section charging the floor, the only logical course of action was for Madsen and David Moseley to take the euphoric plunge.

"They were just having fun, and I'm glad," Montgomery said. "They deserved it."

On the subject of convincingly seizing a championship, Stanford had learned from the best. It was only a year ago that Arizona blasted the Cardinal 90-58, on Senior Night in Tucson, to clinch the Pac-10 title.

Saturday -- with the Maples crowd saying a tearful farewell to seniors Lee, Weems, Tim Young, Peter Sauer and Mark Seaton -- the Cardinal trotted out its biggest home victory ever over Arizona.

The victory also settled the question of Stanford's regional destination in the NCAA Tournament. The Pac-10 champ goes to the West Regional -- this is a virtual given -- and so the Cardinal's route back to the Final Four will go through Seattle or Denver in the early rounds, and then Phoenix in the regional semifinals and finals.

The only suspense left is whether Stanford can land a No. 1 seed when Selection Sunday arrives in seven days. With the second-toughest schedule in the nation, and now with its fifth victory over a Top 25 team, the Cardinal is a good candidate if it doesn't slip in Oregon next weekend.