It’s been three full days since the men’s basketball team suffered a frustrating Civil War loss on their home court, but the noticeable pall over Matthew Knight Arena has yet to lift as the Ducks prepare for a trip to Utah.
Oregon, after all, was far from overmatched against the Beavers. Rather, the Ducks simply failed to execute when it mattered most, turning the ball over 23 times and missing crucial assignments on defense — and that makes the loss sting even more.
“It was all on us,” junior forward E.J. Singler said. “We were just making careless mistakes. We just need to take care of the ball more.”
The notion that they let one get away has made the past few days particularly tough.
“It’s been a little stressful, when we have losses like that,” senior forward Tyrone Nared said. “Because when we beat ourselves, we know we hurt our chances of being in the hunt for making the tournament. That’s all of our goals right now, obviously, so it’s really stressful on the players and the coaches. We can’t let stuff like that slide next time.”
Indeed, there is little room for error as the Ducks board the plane for their first stop on the Utah-Colorado road trip. This weekend will mark the first time Oregon faces off with either of the two newest Pac-12 entries, and the team is taking pains not to take either matchup lightly.
On Thursday, Oregon (15-6, 6-3 Pac-12) will stop by the Jon M. Huntsman Center to take on a struggling Utah team (5-16, 2-7 Pac-12). Nared, for his part, has seen the Utes play just once this year, and while he wasn’t impressed, he knows better than to overlook them. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
“I watched one game, and they were terrible, but you can’t look at it like that,” Nared said. “Because they can come in and beat us. It’s their home court, so you never know what’s going to happen.”
Mired near the bottom of the Pac-12 standings, ahead of only USC, Utah’s offense in particular has struggled (55.9 points per game, 11th in the Pac-12). The defense hasn’t been much better (70.6 points per game, 10th Pac-12), and it all adds up to the worst scoring margin in the conference (-14.8). @@http://www.pac-12.org/portals/7/images/MBasketball/2011-12-stats/HTML/UTAH.HTM@@
In short, Utah is a far cry from the challenge Oregon State presented, but that doesn’t change any of the issues Oregon has to clean up on its own end.
“Utah is a different type of team than Oregon State,” Oregon head coach Dana Altman said. “But we still got to handle the ball, and we still got to get opportunities to score. And we just didn’t give those to ourselves (against Oregon State), plus our turnovers led to easy baskets.”
Whatever happens on Thursday in Salt Lake City, the Ducks will still have to turn around and face a much more daunting task in Colorado (14-7, 6-3 Pac-12). The Buffaloes currently stand tied with Oregon for third in the conference, just one game behind top dogs California and Washington, and will be the first in a slew of quality opponents Oregon is set to face on the road as the season winds down.  @@http://www.pac-12.org/portals/7/images/MBasketball/2011-12-stats/HTML/COLO.HTM@@
“We got some tough road games when you look at the standings,” Altman said. “Colorado’s right up at the top, we still have to go to Stanford and Cal, and (we) still gotta go back to Oregon State. We got a lot of games on the road — five — and all of them are going to be tough.”
And yet, the old mantra of “one game at a time” comes to mind for Oregon going forward. The Ducks simply can’t afford to look too far forward or approach games with anything less than a single-minded focus.
“It’s getting way too close to the end of the season to take any of these games lightly anymore,” Nared said. “Or we could be out of the hunt really fast.”