Poor shooting and an electric second-half performance from California’s Allen Crabbe doomed the Oregon men’s basketball team on Sunday in a 77-60 loss. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
Crabbe scored 23 points in the second half alone as the Golden Bears (13-4, 3-1 Pac-12) ran away from the Ducks (11-5, 2-2). After trailing by just three at the half, Oregon committed seven of its 14 turnovers in the second half and never found an offensive rhythm en route to a paltry 38.3 percent shooting night. Cal, meanwhile, shot a blistering 60 percent from the field in the second half while running away with the victory. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@ @@http://www.calbears.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2011-2012/teamcume.html@@
“The second half they got it going,” head coach Dana Altman said. “Crabbe got it going, I think he was five for six from three in the second half. He got it going and he just made that four- or five-point game a double-digit game pretty quickly.”
Indeed, Oregon trailed by just three at halftime despite a slow start. Both teams were sloppy early on with six turnovers before the intermission, and Crabbe was just 1 of 5 from the field when the second half began. Yet the Ducks (31.3 percent) shot even worse than the Golden Bears (40 percent), and fell into Cal’s favored pace early on. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
“We had some opportunities in the first half, and we didn’t do a good job,” Altman said. “We gave up some easy baskets there. I didn’t like us running the floor. I didn’t think we ran out and looked for easy ones. I thought the tempo of the game really favored them the first half.”
In spite of it all, back-to-back threes from senior Devoe Joseph and junior E.J. Singler allowed Oregon to take a 33-32 lead early in the second half. The Golden Bears would quickly bounce back with an 8-0 run of their own, though, and the Ducks would never reclaim the lead.
With Oregon clinging to a four-point deficit at the 11:02 mark, Crabbe hit his first three of the half. Less than a minute later, he bagged another to extend the lead to 12, and his third shot from deep broke the game open at 55-38. Though nearly nine minutes remained, Crabbe had already delivered a knockout punch. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
“I thought we just had our hands down on the first couple that he got of the second half,” Altman said. “And once a shooter like that gets going, the basket looks really big. He hit one or two tough ones, but I thought the first couple that he hit were not contested nearly as well as they needed to be.”
Crabbe would hit two more from deep as Cal’s lead ballooned to as much as 19. By the time the clock finally ran out, Cal’s sophomore guard had totaled game highs in points (26) and rebounds (12). Fellow guards Jorge Gutierrez and Justin Cobbs chipped in with 18 and 15 points, respectively, and as a team Cal came away with a crisp 49.2 shooting percentage.
Oregon, meanwhile, never found its offensive rhythm and was stymied by a combination of its own lack of execution and Cal’s physicality.
“They’re a good defensive team,” Joseph said. “And they played strong and fought through screens and made it tough for us.”
Still, after Altman’s team compiled just eight total assists, he placed most of the blame on his own players.
“Our guys all feel like they can make a play,” Altman said. “So they’re trying to make a play and not really trusting their teammates and trusting the offense, and we had a couple of stretches like that today.”
Joseph led the way for the Ducks with 14 points and six rebounds. Singler came through with 12 points, while Ashaolu totaled 10. No other Oregon player had more than seven points, and the Ducks were outscored 40-20 in the paint.
“They really clog up the middle. It’s really hard to get anything easy inside,” Ashaolu said. “They’re a strong, physical team. We didn’t match that tonight.”