‘Nerds Who Can Play’ Worthy of Final Four

Matt Lottich elbowed one guy, shoved another, grunted to the rafters and grabbed a rebound.

With one second remaining.

With his team leading by 11.

This is Stanford.

Josh Childress lost the ball at midcourt to the fastest guy on the floor, watched him sprint away for an uncontested dunk.

Then chased him down.

Tipped away the dunk.

This is Stanford.

Winner of the Pacific 10 Conference tournament Saturday, the top-ranked team in the country next week, a certain top seeding in the NCAA tournament and we know what you’re saying.

Soft Cardinal. Thin Cardinal. More-March-sadness-Cardinal.

Well, after watching this team beat Washington, 77-66, on Saturday at Staples Center, I’m advising you to watch your mouth.

These players will punch it, then shut it, and right now, before brackets are announced, I’m penciling them into the Final Four.

“I know, in the national press, we’re just a bunch of nerds,” center Joe Kirchofer said Saturday evening. “I’m not saying we’re not. But we’re nerds who can play.”

While many powerhouse tournament teams are Showtime, Stanford is “That ‘70s Show,” and Kirchofer is one of their senior leaders.

Unruly afro, sideburns, goofy grin, runs like the floor is quicksand, missing only the tie-dyed socks and rainbow headband.

But, oh yeah, he averages one rebound every four minutes.

And when Stanford was holding off a furious Washington rally Saturday, he grabbed about every one of those suckers.

Afterward, when he was asked how he played so well, Kirchofer looked confused.

“Me?” he said. “Or us?”

The word “me” is, indeed, as foreign to Stanford as Basket Weaving 101.

Five guys average in double figures. Ten guys will regularly play.

“We don’t depend on one person ... and the kids like each other enough that they don’t want to let each other down,” Coach Mike Montgomery said.

Translated, of the seven shots attempted by the last three guys off the bench Saturday, six were successful.

And the one guy who was coldest -- guard Chris Hernandez made just one of six shots -- was complimented the most.

“That we have no quit in us comes from our point guard, Hernandez,” said Lottich, who outscored his partner, 20-5. “You’d have to kill him to beat him.”

I know, I know, you’ve heard all this corny stuff about Stanford before. But this season, with the exception of those still worn by the cheerleaders, the little white gloves have come off.

Forget the history, the eight failures to advance past the second round in 11 tournament appearances under Montgomery.

This team has survived more than those teams, enduring the pressure of an undefeated season until the final regular-season game, handling the revenge of that loss Saturday against the Huskies, a legitimate 29-1.

“This group, I don’t think, is as talented, but I think Coach Montgomery would say that this is one of the toughest, more resilient groups he’s had,” Washington Coach Lorenzo Romar said.

And forget the earlier worries that Stanford wouldn’t be tough enough in the middle, because the middle just showed up.

His name is Justin Davis, he’s 6 feet 9, he’s their best inside player, and he made his first start in nearly two months Saturday after recovering from a knee injury.

Which is sort of like the best team in baseball adding one of the sport’s best players three weeks before the end of the season. Yeah, like the Yankees.

“We are best when we are big,” said Montgomery, and Davis’ 13 points and seven rebounds would qualify.

Davis, who learned during the morning shoot-around that he would be starting, said of Montgomery, “He wanted his beast out there.”

But he said it quietly, almost as though he was embarrassed to admit it, and that’s Stanford.

This team fought for more than two hours against a smaller Washington team that bumped and shoved and challenged them from Figueroa to Cherry Street.

But afterward, there was no boasting, no taunting, barely any cheering. The buzzer sounded and the Cardinal players immediately lined up to shake hands with their victims.

And when despondent Husky Will Conroy sat alone at the end of the scorer’s table, far from the handshake line, those players broke out of the line and found him and hugged him too.

No word on which Cardinal mom was in charge of postgame cookies and juice boxes.

“Yeah, we’re a class program, that’s important to us,” Kirchofer said. “But being a class program doesn’t mean you don’t play with emotion or play hard.”

Remember that this week when the floor-burn notion of Duke or Kentucky or Oklahoma State feels better than the flighty idea of Stanford.

Remember how Lottich, after scoring a game-high 20 points with six rebounds and five assists and one block and one steal, still had time to fight for that one last ball, which he carried off the floor.

“Yeah, well, we don’t want to give up anything,” he said later, shortly after giving up that ball to teammate Childress.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at [email protected]. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.