ething thats now a rarity.Last year I hated it in the preseason

STANFORD, Calif. -- Stanford returned to the basketball court Friday night after as many as eight of its players completed final exams in the morning.I didnt have the guts to play a high-level Division I team today, coach Jerod Haase said after his Cardinal beat Division II Cal State East Bay 79-55.Reid Travis powered his way to 24 points and 13 rebounds for his fifth double-double of the season and Stanford (7-3) made its first seven shots from the field to take charge from the start.Haase said scheduling a Division II opponent after a 13-day break for exams made sense for his team.Finals is a real thing here. The guys are exhausted, he said. We had guys show up for our (12:45 p.m.) shoot around after pulling all-nighters.After a tough finals week its good to have a game like this where we can just work on getting better, senior Grant Verhoeven said. There was a lot out there that wasnt pretty at our end of the court.Travis shot 9 for 10 from the field, playing just 22 minutes. Dorian Pickens added 11 points for Stanford, which shot a season-best 55 percent, including nearly 70 percent in the first half.Cal State East Bay played one night after beating Cal Poly Pomona 78-69 on the road in a Northern California Athletic Conference game. The Pioneers (8-2) counted the Stanford matchup as an exhibition.Whenever you have an opportunity to play a university like this, you have to do it, Pioneers coach Guy Argenal said. For our guys, its learning how to play against the highest competition.Pierre Carter scored 14 points for Cal State East Bay, which shot 29.7 percent.BIG PICTUREStanford: Haase said the Cardinal had just five full practices during its 13 days off for exams. I didnt expect perfect play out there, he said. There were certainly some positives, but theres also a lot of room for growth. Stanford plays twice more before opening Pac-12 play at home against Arizona State on Dec. 30.Cal State East Bay: The Pioneers lost for the third time against a San Francisco Bay Area opponent in a game they designated as an exhibition. Previously, they fell 96-80 to San Jose State and 75-50 to Santa Clara.STAT OF THE NIGHTStanford won easily despite shooting 1 for 7 from the perimeter. The Cardinal scored 42 points in the paint, so perimeter shooting wasnt a priority. But Stanford is converting just 28.7 percent from beyond the arc this year. The 3-point shot has to be part of our offense, Haase said. We have to be more efficient than we have been.UP NEXTStanford: The Cardinal travels to face SMU (8-3) on Monday. The Mustangs already have faced one Pac-12 opponent, losing 78-73 to USC.Cal State East Bay: The Pioneers return to Division II competition Monday when they hosts Cal State Los Angeles in a California College Athletic Association game. 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MIAMI -- Players have an open disdain for back-to-back games in the regular season, even while understanding theres no way around them when trying to wedge 82 games into 170 days.So some teams are spending part of this preseason trying to get ready.NBA teams get to largely dictate their own preseason schedule, and nine clubs opted to have at least one set of back-to-back games on their exhibition slate. Most are going on this weekend, with five teams -- Toronto, Cleveland, Miami, Golden State and Chicago -- playing either the first or second night of a back-to-back on Friday.Its good practice for us, Toronto coach Dwane Casey said. We want to approach it the way were going to approach it a few weeks from now, because theyre coming. And so the way we mentally approach back-to-backs ... weve got to get excited about it. Even though deep down we know its exhibition, weve got to get into a mindset of how do we prepare mentally, how do we prepare physically.Most teams around the league avoided them entirely. And Torontos isnt a true back-to-back, per se -- the Raptors were playing Cleveland on Thursday, then stepping out of the NBA realm to play the Argentinian club San Lorenzo on Friday.The Heat and the Los Angeles Clippers are subjecting themselves to preseason back-to-backs twice. And it could be argued the Heat are playing three of the dreaded sets, when factoring in their open scrimmage on Monday night that was the prequel to Tuesdays preseason game against Brooklyn.I want our guys to feel a lot of different situations, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said.Clippers coach Doc Rivers said he didnt mind them since they allow for more practice time, and he structured his schedule accordingly. Outside of his back-to-backs on Oct. 4 and 5 and Oct. 17 and 18, his team plays only twice during the 11-day span in between.I just think eight games is too many ffor guys, Rivers said.dddddddddddd I think this is nice. You play guys minutes, almost all of them. You give some guys a rest in some of them. I think its good.The Heat, who open their first back-to-back in San Antonio on Friday, have two in the span of a week. That closely mirrors something that happens during the course of the regular season. The NBA has made strides in recent years to reduce how many times each club has to endure games on consecutive nights -- or the even-more-dreaded four-games-in-five-days, something thats now a rarity.Last year I hated it in the preseason, said Heat forward Justise Winslow, entering his second season. But now I realize the purpose of it, just so guys can feel it, feel what it feels like mentally and physically.Minnesota plays its preseason back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday. The other two teams with them on their exhibition schedule are Charlotte and New York, clubs that decided put them toward the end of their preseason slate.Knicks coach Jeff Hornacek said it provides him with a chance to evaluate some players whose roles might still be unclear -- and that, as one might expect, stars like Carmelo Anthony wont log big minutes like they would in the regular season.I dont really anticipate playing Carmelo 35 minutes one night and 35 minutes the next, Hornacek said. So it might give an opportunity to some of these other guys, especially there are some of these guys trying to make the roster. Give them a little more playing time in those back-to-back situations to see what would happen if they were on your team. So for evaluation purposes its good but playing wise, you try not to kill these guys early.---AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in New York contributed to this report. ' ' '