Buffaloes trample Card: Is the Johnny Dawkins era finally coming to an end?

Stop me if you've heard this one before: the Stanford men's basketball team is a disaster.

Less than a week after knocking off Cal at Maples, the Cardinal traveled to Boulder to try and get a big win for the first time all season... and promptly made a mess all over themselves.

This time, it was a 75-54 beatdown at the hands of the Colorado Buffaloes, where Andre Roberson grabbed 20 rebounds and the Cardinal shot a mind-boggingly bad 31 percent from the floor.

Hmm. All I can think is this: what's the excuse this time around?

Something generic like, "I thought we played well, but the shots just weren't falling"? Roberson just played out of his mind and he would not be denied? It's really, really hard traveling to the Mountain Time Zone? My guys really hate wearing red jerseys?

At some point, the excuses just don't cut it any more.

Last year, it took a miraculous run through the NIT tournament to bring some positivity to the Stanford basketball program, but everyone was forced to admit that things certainly appeared to be on the up-and-up. A deep team coming back. A recruiting class filled with big guys. The addition of 2-time NBA champ Mark Madsden to the staff.

But six games into the Pac-12 season, this verse of the Dawkins era - the fifth verse - looks just as bad as the first four.

Now, Dawkins' "deep" team just looks like a team filled with mediocre players who have been given mediocre plays to execute. Now, that NIT title run just looks like a fluke. Now, hiring Madsen looks like a move where Dawkins was grasping at straws to try and find a link back to the "glory days" of the Stanford program.

Just look at where Dawkins has this team again: Ninth in the conference. 296th in the nation in field goal percentage. 130th in the nation in scoring. And certainly not going to the NCAA tournament once again.

After nearly five years, Dawkins is 32-46 in the Pac-12, and this team looks no better than any other that he has fielded in the last four seasons.

So now I have only one question left to ask: is this the year that the excuses finally end?