The men’s basketball team takes its second conference road trip of the season this week, with games against the Stanford Cardinal and California Golden Bears.
First up is Stanford (12-3, 2-3 Pacific-10 Conference) Thursday night, 7:30 p.m. at Maples Pavilion, where the Ducks haven’t won since 1986. Oregon head coach Ernie Kent has never won there.
“That’s something that gets you up, knowing that you could be the first to get him that win and then we could just keep progressing from there,” said freshman guard Matt Humphrey.
“Stanford is a tough place to play in, a great environment,” said junior guard Tajuan Porter. “We’ve just got to play tough. We’ve got to play our game, get back on our game.”
The Cardinal’s three losses have all come in conference play. The first a rare lopsided defeat at Maples Pavilion to No. 14 Arizona State, 90-60, to open conference play, then a winless road trip to Washington against the Cougars and Huskies.
They rebounded from those defeats last weekend with a narrow 75-69 home win over then-No. 23 California. Senior forward Lawrence Hill was named Pac-10 Player of the Week for his career-high matching 25-point performance, his first such honor. Hill added three rebounds and three assists in the win. He currently ranks 12th in the Pac-10 in scoring (14.7 points per game) and ninth in rebounding (6.1 rebounds per game).
In the paint, Stanford is a rare break from running the gauntlet of powerhouse Pac-10 centers for Oregon freshmen Michael Dunigan and Josh Crittle. Stanford has started 6-foot-10 sophomore Will Paul in the middle to limited success, as he has averaged 3.3 points and 1.1 rebounds per contest this season. It has gotten slightly better production from 6-foot-8 sophomore Josh Owens, averaging 9.3 points per game and 4.7 rebounds per game off the bench.
The Ducks will look to get the ball inside and get Dunigan rolling early.
“Mike should be a dominant inside force down there and we’re going to throw the ball to him,” Porter said.
“Mike Dunigan needs to really go down there with his eyes wide open, because they don’t have a guy like him right now,” Kent said. “If he can go in there with some force inside, anything can happen in this ballgame.”
Oregon players said they learned an important lesson about effort from their late run against Washington State last Saturday, which followed Kent’s first-ever ejection midway through the second half.
“We shouldn’t have to have coach Kent get kicked out of the game to come play hard. We should have played like that the whole game and we probably would have got that win,” Humphrey said. “I feel like we turned our intensity up six levels and did pretty well from that time on … We should have just played like that from the get-go and we would have been alright.”
Oregon sits alone in last place in the Pac-10 and winless in conference play, but Kent said the players haven’t given up yet on the season, or themselves.
“The good thing about them is they continue to come back and continue to work,” he said. “If they continue to have that type of attitude they have an opportunity to continue to get better.”
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Dunigan, size key vs. Cardinal
Daily Emerald
January 21, 2009
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