In football, Washington danced on Oregon’s “O” at the end of the game three years ago.
In basketball, Washington guard Nate Robinson dunked the basketball as time ran out on a game in which the Huskies had already secured a victory last season.
Oregon State may be the “official” rival of the Ducks, but Washington has become a very close second.
Duck forward Ian Crosswhite thinks that no one on his team should have a problem getting up for Oregon’s Pacific-10 Conference matchup on Thursday against the Huskies at Bank of America Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion in Seattle.
“It’s easy to get fired up for this one, because they have all their fans,” Crosswhite said. “Their students are right behind you, and with all those people in there, it’s easy to get that fire in your belly.”
The Australian native said Husky students will be letting the Ducks know exactly where they are all game.
“You can hear everything they are saying,” Crosswhite said. “You just have to block that out of your mind.”
But Crosswhite said that is something the young Duck squad will face in every away game.
“Every Pac-10 school (is like that),” Crosswhite said. “Stanford’s like that, and at Arizona State there’s nobody in the crowd except the drunk baseball players.”
Oregon point guard Aaron Brooks said that for as crazy as the Huskies’ crowd gets, it’s nothing compared to Mac Court.
“It’s a step down from Mac Court,” the Seattle native said. “But it’s a nice atmosphere they got going up there. You know it’s going to be rowdy.”
The one thing that Oregon’s leading scorer doesn’t want is for the game to be focused on him — either for his hometown return or his matchup with Robinson.
“It’s going to be a great game, and Nate’s a good player,” Brooks said. “We’re trying to stay away from a one-on-one battle with me and Nate and focus on what we need to do as a team.”
But for some of the freshmen, it will be their first Pac-10 encounter away from the comforts of McArthur Court, and their first meeting with the Huskies.
“It’s going to be a new experience for me,” Freshman Maarty Leunen said. “It’s going to be a test to play a tough Washington team on the road.”
Leunen said that not much has been mentioned about what happened at the end of last season’s matchup in Seattle.
“They haven’t told me too much,” the
Redmond native said. “I know it was a heated battle and some stuff happened at the end.”
Fellow freshman Bryce Taylor knows the game will be an intense one.
“We know it is extremely competitive, and they will be talking a lot of junk to us,” Taylor said. “We got to play a tough style (of basketball) and not back down.”
Crosswhite agrees that this will be a hard fought game.
“They play physical and want to show they have a lot of heart or whatever it is,” Crosswhite said. “You’ve got to go down there and show that you have that same kind of heart.”

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