Christian Bliss came off the bench to bury four 3-pointers, Nick Townsend scored a game-high 25 points and Stanford used its superior perimeter shooting to turn back visiting Oakland 81-63 in a nonconference game Friday night.
Bliss finished with 17 points and Aidan Cammann chipped in 13 for the Cardinal (2-0), who connected on nine of 27 3-point attempts (33.3%) while outscoring the Golden Grizzlies 27-9 from beyond the arc.
Chris Fields Jr. scored a team-high 23 points for Oakland (0-2), which shot 3-for-17 (17.6%) from 3-point range.
Up just 40-39 after a layup by Oakland’s William Kassi in the second minute of the second half, Stanford got its long-range shooting game going and gradually pulled away.
A 3-pointer by Bliss began what turned into a 22-10 run for the Cardinal. Townsend and Isaiah Rogers then connected from deep once apiece before Bliss hit two more in succession, giving Stanford a 62-49 lead with 9:29 remaining.
Playing the second of five season-opening road games, Oakland got no closer than nine points after that.
Townsend, a graduate transfer from Yale, had 12 points in his Stanford debut earlier in the week, a 74-65 win over Eastern Washington.
He made eight of 11 shots and also grabbed a game-high-tying eight rebounds. Bliss went 5-for-8 from the field, including 4-for-5 from 3-point range, and also grabbed eight boards. Townsend added four assists and four steals.
Fields shot 9-for-12 but got little help from his Oakland teammates, who combined to shoot 13-for-37 (35.1%). He also shared the team lead in rebounds with six and added two steals.
Kassi finished with 11 points and six rebounds for the Golden Grizzlies, who trailed by as many as 10 in the first half before scoring seven of the period’s final nine points to pull within 38-33 at halftime.