Mission: NCAA Tournament.
Impossible? Freddie Jones and the rest of Oregon men’s basketball players think a trip to the NCAAs is not out of reach this season.
“Everybody on this team feels that we can go to the tournament,” Jones said.
The road to Bracketville 2002 will begin tonight against a team that danced in March Madness last season.
The Ducks will take on Alabama State at 8:15 p.m. at McArthur Court. The game will be the second contest of the America’s Youth Classic Tournament, which kicks off at 6 p.m. with Long Beach State taking on Western Michigan. Oregon will take on Western Michigan on Friday night, then Long Beach State on Saturday as the teams all play each other.
Oregon will try to win its 10th-straight season opener tonight against the Hornets of Alabama State. The Hornets received an automatic bid to the 2001 NCAA Tournament after they won the Southwestern Athletic Conference title last season.
“They are a small, strong team that will shoot the ball deep,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said.
Alabama State, a No. 16 seed in the tournament last season, drew No. 1-seed Michigan State in the first round and lost 69-35. This season, the Hornets return top scorer Tyrone Levett and three other starters from last year’s team.
The Ducks convincingly won both of their exhibition games last week by scores of 95-47 and 85-65. But the Oregon players felt they showed several glaring weaknesses, which they will look to improve upon before Pacific-10 Conference play begins in December.
“We need to step up our intensity a little bit,” Kent said. “We just need to fine tune our whole system.”
The coach and the players said that the Ducks will be especially looking to cut down on turnovers, after they committed a combined 46 in the exhibition games.
“I think we’re trying to do too much with the ball,” Kent said. “We need to pass the ball more, instead of hanging on to it.”
On offense, Jones is on the cusp of moving up in the Oregon record books, and could achieve several milestones this weekend. Jones needs six points to reach 1,000 for his career, 29 points to move into 19th-place all-time at Oregon, seven blocks to move into fourth all-time and eight three-pointers to move into sixth all-time.
Jones will have a shot to achieve all those marks only because the Ducks will play three games this weekend.
Ducks sign three top recruits
Oregon ensured its future will be in good hands Wednesday with the signing of two high school athletes and one junior college transfer.
Brandon Lincoln, a 6-foot-4 guard from Portland’s Jefferson High who is ranked by ESPN.com as one of the top 100 prep seniors, and Kent’s son, Jordan, a 6-foot-4 guard from Churchill High, are the two prep signees.
The JC addition is 6-foot-3 guard Andre Joseph, out of Lee Junior College in Texas, where he averaged 15.8 points per game.
“This is a versatile group that can fill a lot of needs,” Kent said.
Peter Hockaday is a sports writer for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be reached at [email protected]
