With 11:34 remaining in the first half, the Ducks found themselves being outplayed in every facet of the game by Cal-State Northridge (3-8), thus resulting in a 16-9 deficit.
Oregon head coach Dana Altman had seen enough and called a a timeout with the hope of waking up his team before getting embarrassed on their home court.
“We really need to get off to a better start,” freshman Ahmaad Rorie said. “He (Altman) was just talking about how this is our court and we can’t let other teams come in here and just control the tempo and do what they want to do — he was pretty stern about it.”
The Ducks responded after the timeout by going on an 8-0 run over the next two minutes, aided by two Joseph Young three-pointers, to put themselves back into the game and from there, slowly pulled away.
Led by Young’s team-high 18 points and the season debut of Michael Chandler, Oregon upped its record to 7-3 with a 79-56 victory.
After being in a slump for most of the season from three-point range, Young went 3-for-5 from deep in the first half to help ignite Oregon’s comeback and finished the game by shooting 7-for-14 from the field, including 4-for-7 from three-point territory. He also finished with eight rebounds, four assists and one steal.
“I think the last two games, he’s done a great job of picking and choosing what shots he wants and because of that his percentages have gone up,” Altman said.
Chandler, who had been out for the first nine games with a knee injury, made his debut with three minutes left tin the first half.
It took Chandler all of two seconds to get his name in the scorebook as picked up a blocking foul right away, but responded with a layup three second after that.
Chandler’s presence down low gives the Ducks a true rim protector, something they haven’t had since Tony Woods left the program two years ago. Chandler finished the game with 13 points and two rebounds in just seven minutes played.
“He was posting up real well, he had his hands up — he actually wanted the ball,” Rorie said of Chandler. “We tried to feed him since it’s his first game — he still needs to work on his conditioning but he was playing real hard.”
Young was electric in the first half, scoring 13 points, to help Oregon out to a 39-30 lead at the half.
“He (Young) was just making plays tonight,” Rorie said. “Whether it was passing or shooting, he was just doing what he’s good at. He was definitely leading tonight when we was down.”
The second half provided very little drama as the Ducks used their full court press to help speed the game and thus result in fast break opportunities. Oregon forced five turnovers in the half and scored 11 points off of them.
The Ducks return to action on Saturday for a 12 p.m. game against Delaware State at Matthew Knight Arena.
Follow Ryan Kostecka on Twitter @Ryan_Kostecka