For the second time this season, the Oregon men’s basketball team was forced to spend a week off prior to taking on in-state rival Oregon State, this time for the final Civil War showdown of the season.
The game marks the 333rd edition of the most-played rivalry in NCAA Division I men’s basketball, and it’s the first game of the second half of the season.
“Coach Kent mentioned this to us and he keeps bringing it up, we’re going down the back stretch of the conference right now,” freshman Jamil Wilson said. “So it’s just like everyone is 0-0, the conference is up for grabs.”
When the Ducks took on the Beavers on Jan. 10, they had just picked up two enormous wins on the road over the Washington schools and were in the midst of a six-game winning streak. The story is somewhat different this time around, as Oregon just dug itself out of a five-game losing skid this past weekend with a 71-66 overtime win against UCLA on Thursday and a 67-57 win over USC on Saturday. The Ducks (12-9, 4-5 Pac-10) now sit in a five-way tie for fifth place in the conference with Washington, Washington State, USC and Stanford each sitting at 4-5.
“It’s not like we’re that far out of first place, and it’s not like we’re that far out of last place,” Wilson said. “We really have to come together as a team and make each other better in these last four or five weeks to make a run at the title.”
Oregon will look to separate itself from that group tomorrow afternoon when the team travels down to the road to Gill Coliseum to take on the last place Beavers (9-12, 3-6 Pac-10).
Oregon State experienced some success when the L.A. schools came to Corvallis last weekend, picking up a 51-45 win over USC on Thursday night before falling 62-52 to UCLA on Saturday. The Beavers won the first Civil War matchup of the season — and last ever at McArthur Court — by a score of 64-57 and got double digit scoring from three of their five starters.
Senior Seth Tarver and junior Daniel Deane paced OSU with 15 points each, while senior center Roeland Schaftenaar chipped in 11. Oregon senior guard Tajuan Porter led the way for the Ducks with a game-high 20 points on just 6-of-20 from the field. The Ducks shot just 35.2 percent as a team that night and an abysmal 20 percent from beyond the arc.
“It really is the mentality,” Kent said of the Ducks poor shooting. “I just don’t think we played very well here. They played very well. We did not shoot the ball extremely well at all. I think we’re shooting the ball a lot better, we shot it really well this week so far.”
Junior guard Calvin Haynes has provided an offensive spark for the last-ranked Oregon State offense, which averages just 60 points per outing. Haynes is averaging 22 points over the past three games after posting back-to-back 25-point performances against California and USC. He is now tied with UCLA’s Michael Roll for 12th in the conference with 13 points per game on the season.
The Ducks have also had a breakout star of their own with sophomore transfer Jeremy Jacob. After getting back-to-back starts alongside regularly starting center Michael Dunigan, Jacob averaged 15 points and 4.5 rebounds during the UCLA and USC wins, including a career-high 19-point effort against the Trojans.
“I feel like (Oregon State) came and beat us at our home so it’s almost like you have to go play your hardest to try and beat them,” Jacob said.
Kent is equally interested to see how his team will react now that Oregon’s first-year players have seen each conference opponent.
“I’m anxious to see again how we play going on the road in that environment over there,” Kent said.
With the Beavers leading the all-time series 182-150, Oregon State will hope to get back on the winning track and pick up its first sweep over Oregon since the 1992-93 season.
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