The Oregon men’s basketball team performed Saturday night similarly to its loss at Washington Thursday night, but there was one noticeable difference during the No. 7 Ducks’ 77-74 win over No. 20 Washington State.
Aaron Brooks was on the floor.
“Aaron Brooks. How many big shots (did he have)?” Oregon coach Ernie Kent said in a broadcast interview. “My staff wanted a timeout (before) his banker, I said ‘No, it’s destiny. Let him go.’ That’s exactly what I told them. No timeout, it’s destiny and he banks in a 40-footer.”
Brooks scored 31 points and grabbed eight rebounds in his first game back from suspension and helped Oregon overcome a nine-point deficit with 3:49 left to go after the Ducks trailed nearly the entire game in front of a near sellout crowd of 11,092 at a hostile Friel Court.
But the Ducks never wavered, eventually tying the game with less than one second remaining and cruising out to a big lead in overtime before hanging on for the dramatic victory.
“Credit to our defense,” Brooks said. “We played hard, we boxed out, we didn’t give up as many offensive rebounds as we did against Washington, and I think that was the key.”
Even with Brooks, the Ducks turned the ball over 19 times, a similar number to their loss in Seattle. Although Oregon has posted at least 18 turnovers in two consecutive games, Kent is only worried about the end result.
“They’re an amazing team on an amazing run,” Kent said. “You’ve just got to flow with it. Don’t worry about how it gets done or how ugly because if you do that you’re going to miss what’s going on.”
Forward Maarty Leunen picked a good time to score his first points of the game. Although he went 0-of-5 from the floor during regulation, Leunen knocked down two clutch free throws to tie the game at 64-64 with half of a second to play after he grabbed the rebound off of a Bryce Taylor miss and was fouled on the putback attempt.
“I think every player in that situation is nervous,” Brooks said. “But if you practice and get enough reps, you can get over the nervousness.”
Leunen had a game-high 10 rebounds and made a three-pointer during overtime that contributed to a 10-0 run, which gave the Ducks a 74-64 lead. But Washington State would not go quietly.
Oregon had virtually no answer for Cougar guard Derrick Low, who led all scorers with 37 points. He scored all 10 of Washington State’s points in overtime and got the Cougars to within three. He then stole the ball from Leunen and had a chance to tie but missed. After another Oregon turnover, Low again had another good look but caught back rim as time expired.
Low finished 10-of-21 with nine of his field goals coming from beyond the three-point line and also had five assists and five steals in the game.
The win gives Oregon a split on the road in Washington and hands Washington State its first home loss of the season.
“In this environment the crowd’s going to have you make some tough calls,” Kent said.
“Here’s an environment where – and Eugene needs to listen to this – there were five thousand students lined up outside to get into this building at about four o’clock today. This is an entirely different environment over here and it did rattle us just a little bit.”
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