Maybe winning on the road to start the Pacific-10 Conference season was a curse rather than a blessing.
Since the Oregon men’s basketball team won 90-79 to beat the Washington Huskies on Jan. 2 to sweep a two-game series in Washington for the first time in 10 years, the Ducks have gone 0-5 on the road and 2-8 overall.
This time around it was a 61-51 loss to the Arizona State Sun Devils in Tempe, Ariz. ASU guard Ty Abbott scored 19 points and Rihards Kuksiks added 12 points to down the Ducks, who got 16 points from sophomore guard Malcolm Armstead in Oregon’s third straight loss.
“We played hard for the first time in a long time for a long stretch in the game,” Oregon’s Matt Humphrey said. “We fought pretty hard; we’ve just got to stay consistent throughout the whole game.”
The Ducks (12-12 overall, 4-8 Pac-10) let a 26-26 halftime score get away from them as the Sun Devils went on an 11-2 run to end the half, then a 15-6 run to begin the second half. The 26-8 run finished Oregon, and ASU head coach Herb Sendek said his team’s defensive effort was the key to holding Oregon to 40.4 percent shooting.
“I thought our guys did a pretty good job on the defensive end,” Sendek said. “Our guys just kept playing; they stayed in the neighborhood with defense, and they did a good job of regrouping among themselves.”
Armstead was 7-for-10 shooting in the game with six assists and guard Humphrey added 11 points, but the real story was senior guard Tajuan Porter’s struggles. Porter — who is the school’s all-time leader in three-point field goals — was 1-for-11 from the field on Saturday and 1-for-8 from long distance.
“He knows he had a tough trip,” Oregon coach Ernie Kent said. “He’s a senior having a little bit of a tough year.”
As for Arizona State, the team shot 44.9 percent from the field and erased Oregon’s nine-point lead in the first half to go up by as much as 15 points in the second. Abbott shot 5-for-13 on three-pointers in the game, including three times during a 12-0 run in the second half that put the game away for ASU.
“There were about seven of those in the game where we did a great job defensively and they hit threes with one second to go (on the shot clock),” Kent said. “There’s nothing you can do but tip your hat and go down and play offense.”
Now the Ducks look to regroup, with Stanford and California coming to Eugene this Thursday and Saturday respectively. Stanford is in ninth place in the conference, just a half a game up on the Ducks. Meanwhile, the Cal Golden Bears are 9-4 in conference and a game up on ASU for first place.
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