With his career at Oregon winding down, Garrett Sim wasn’t looking to waste any opportunities.
He had just four games left at Matthew Knight Arena heading into Thursday night’s matchup with Washington — four games to create lasting memories and perhaps even help propel Oregon to an unlikely Pac-12 title. The clock was ticking, and so Sim wasted no time after the opening tip, effectively putting the Huskies away within the game’s first two minutes.
Oregon (17-7, 8-4 Pac-12) would go on to win handily against conference-leading Washington (16-8, 9-3 Pac-12) by a score of 82-57, but it was Sim’s red-hot start that set the tone for the night. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
The senior exploded for Oregon’s first eight points — six coming on three-pointers— while the Huskies remained scoreless. A jumper from Terrence Ross finally put Washington on the board after nearly two minutes, but Devoe Joseph responded with Oregon’s third three-pointer of the game, and all of a sudden the Ducks held a commanding 11-2 advantage heading into the first TV timeout.
“Garrett really got us going in the first half with a quick eight points,” junior forward E.J. Singler said. “And we just went off from there.”
The onslaught would only continue, as Sim drained his third three-pointer of the game at the 11:36 mark and Oregon went on to outscore the Huskies 25-13 over the final minutes of the first half. Forward Carlos Emory punctuated the explosion with a tip-in at the buzzer, and the Huskies were left to trudge back into the locker room wondering what, exactly, had gone so wrong.
For the most part, Oregon appeared to have simply approached the game with a higher level of intensity.
“We came out with a chip on our shoulders,” senior forward Jeremy Jacob said. “We lost pretty bad to them at Washington, so we wanted to get a little payback here.”
While the Ducks shot a blistering 64.3 percent from the field in the first half, Washington just barely broke the 30 percent mark. Both teams turned the ball over seven times in the opening 20 minutes, but Oregon managed to convert those giveaways into 12 points compared to Washington’s two. With Sim leading the way (13 points, five assists), Washington faced the steepest of climbs to even get back within a respectable margin in the second half.
It wouldn’t happen.
The teams mostly traded baskets in the second half, which spelled impending doom for Washington as Oregon pushed its lead to as much as 27. The margin never fell below 20, and the Ducks seemed to feed off the home crowd’s energy.
“The crowd, the students before the game, during the game — we gave them something to cheer about,” head coach Dana Altman said. “There was a lot of enthusiasm, a lot of intensity in the building, and that really helped us.”
The Huskies did push their shooting clip to a more respectable 42.4 percent in the second half, but it wouldn’t be nearly enough to quell an Oregon team that seemingly could not miss. The Ducks’ 48.1 percent shooting over the final 20 minutes was not quite up to par with the first-half explosion, but still perfectly efficient as the blowout became a reality. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
In the end, it was a dominating 82-57 victory that put Oregon right back into the hunt for the conference title. Washington remains in a tie for first with California, while Oregon, Colorado and Arizona are each tied for third place.
“The only thing we’re doing is worrying about ourselves,” Singler said. “That’s all you can do … just gotta be ready for each and every game, and if we do that, things will fall into place.”
They certainly did on this night, and it was a standout performance across the board for the Ducks. Emory led the way with 16 points to go along with eight rebounds and punctuated his night with a breakaway windmill dunk late in the second half. Sim went scoreless in the second half and ended with 13 points, while both Joseph and Singler also scored 13.
“We really played well,” Altman said. “Our ball movement was good. We took away some of their strengths I thought. The intensity and the focus, I thought, was pretty good.
“That was our best effort.”