Instead, UC Davis chose to throw itself in front of muscle-bound Stanford on Saturday night, and the result was one swell tattoo for the defending Division II national champs. A tattoo worth admiring, but a tattoo nonetheless.

Debuting in its newfound role as the No. 3-ranked team in the country -- and doesn't that still sound silly? -- the Cardinal thumped UC Davis 76-49 before a sellout crowd at Maples Pavilion. All things considered, it qualified as a gloriously painful start for first-year UCD coach Brian Fogel.

"We were so excited to be here. This was huge for us," said Fogel, who spent three previous seasons as an Aggies assistant. "I'm proud with the way we competed tonight."

The Aggies weren't fooling themselves. The UCD press notes called this game "easily the biggest challenge in the 86-year history of the Aggie program," and the honest players had a pretty good idea that their 22-game winning streak was cooked before they climbed on the team bus.

All the same, the Aggies were down only 38-28 at halftime. In a moment that is sure to go down in UCD lore, 6-foot-7 center Jason Cox actually had the audacity to soar through the lane and throw down a one-handed dunk over Stanford's 6-10 Jarrod Collins. The next sound you heard were 7,391 jaws hitting the floor.

Alas, it simply could not last. Cox is the Aggies' tallest player; Stanford has seven guys his height or taller and plays them all. The Cardinal pounded UC Davis silly in the second half, roaring off runs of 11-3 and 14-3 and producing a 55-28 rebounding edge.

Weary from the beating, the Ags hoisted 26 shots in the second half and hit only five -- a clanging 19.2 percent. UCD shot only 30 percent for the game.

"You really don't know how good you are (until you play a team like Stanford)," said UCD point guard Dante Ross, who had 16 points and generally acquitted himself well against Stanford preseason All-American Arthur Lee.

"We're not going to play a team like this again. So if we can hang with them, we're going to be all right."

Stanford's goal was clear. The Cardinal, with every meaningful player back from last season's Final Four run, wanted to stretch its legs before jumping into the Preseason NIT this week. That field includes North Carolina, Purdue, Massachusetts and a few other familiar powers.

So coach Mike Montgomery played 10 men at least 15 minutes each, played no one more than 21 minutes, received scoring from 12 players, and watched Mark Madsen secure team-high scoring honors with a whopping 11. The Cardinal could afford to be annoyed with aesthetics. The top free-throw shooting team in the Pacific-10 Conference last season, Stanford hit only 48.3 percent from the line Saturday. Lee, who entered the game with a string of 38 consecutive free-throw conversions, missed his first attempt of the season and lost a chance to challenge the Pac-10 record of 40.

Stanford's 16 turnovers were a little high. And the shot selection wasn't always textbook. But Montgomery was willing to credit some of that to the Aggies.

"I have a lot of respect for Davis," he said. "They're extremely well-coached. They play hard, and they run a lot of good stuff."

For Davis, this was a no-lose carnival ride, and anything was worth trying once. Brent Wyse, UCD's 6-6 freshman, gamely muscled in against 7-2 preseason All-American Tim Young in the opening moments; Young blocked the shot so completely that he practically palmed it in midair.

Still, it took the Cardinal almost the entire first half to forge a double-digit lead against the Aggies, simply because Davis was too stubborn to let it happen.