Many things looked out of place Sunday night at McArthur Court, even if the result has been the same for 16 straight years.
For the 16th straight game at home, Oregon beat Oregon State – and that was about the last thing that resembled its usual self. Oregon, a team that had mastered the second-half collapse for 14 straight games, rallied from a 14-point hole in the second half and scored 24 of the game’s next 27 points for a resounding 79-69 win.
All the while in that second half, when the Ducks committed just one turnover, the Beavers repeatedly looked flustered against Oregon’s full-court press defense, a system they themselves had perfected all season to become the darlings of the Pacific-10 Conference.
“We haven’t been handled like that by a press in a while,” Oregon State head coach Craig Robinson said. “The turnovers we had against the press were unusual.
“Lesson learned.”
Down 32-45 with 17:01 remaining, junior forward Joevan Catron scored a layup that would begin the 24-point run for Oregon (8-20, 2-14 Pac-10) that ended nearly seven minutes later with the Ducks up 56-48 after freshman guard Matthew Humphrey’s three-pointer.
Dormant most of the season during Oregon’s 14-straight league losses, the McArthur Court crowd of 8,769 stayed on its feet for most of the second half as it watched the home team make nearly all the right plays down the stretch, closing out Oregon State with free throws and defensive stops in the final five minutes.
Oregon’s defense, the worst in the Pac-10, lulled the Beavers (13-14, 7-9) into an expired shot clock with 14:53 left, then challenged OSU junior point-center Roeland Schaftenaar into an airball three-pointer with just under 11 minutes remaining that brought the crowd to its feet once again. The efficient OSU offense began to unravel in front of the surprised Robinson.
“We just turned the tables on them to see how they’d handle it,” junior guard Tajuan Porter said of the Ducks’ pressure defense that caused 12 turnovers and got 20 points off them. “We assumed they’d be better since they practice against it.”
The fickle offense that had caused Oregon head coach Ernie Kent frustration shot 60 percent from three-point range and 51 percent for the game, with Porter leading all scorers with 24 points and Humphrey scoring a career-high 17 in his second straight game-changing performance.
Robinson’s team was up 38-28 at the half by shooting 62 percent, and stretched its lead to 14 with junior guard Seth Tarver’s layup with 18 minutes left. He said neither he nor his team was comfortable with the lead, but got taken over by Oregon’s run nonetheless.
“We should have punched them in the mouth when we had the chance,” said OSU sophomore guard Calvin Hayes, who scored 16 points.
The Beavers dominated scoring inside the paint with 16 more points than the Ducks, but the bulk of Oregon’s 47 bench points came in the second half with Humphrey’s 11 points.
Kent said he wanted to see his young team rewarded after its troubles with a win against Stanford.
“They needed a reward,” he said.
The Civil War win, he said, was even more special.
“This,” he said, “was an even greater reward.”
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