SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Oregon men’s basketball team had such an entertaining game on Saturday that head coach Ernie Kent wished he was in the stands instead of pacing the sideline.
“I want to go home and watch this game,” Kent said with a grin afterward. “What a great, entertaining game.”
The game was a 92-87 Oregon win over Wake Forest in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, a victory that set up a matchup between the Ducks and the Texas Longhorns in the Sweet 16 on Friday in Madison, Wisc.Saturday’s entertainment came mostly from three players — Oregon’s Freddie Jones, Luke Ridnour and Luke Jackson — who scored all but two of the Ducks’ points in the second half.
“We all expect to have games like this,” Jones said.
The trio spearheaded Oregon’s multiple comebacks in the game. Down by as many as 11 points in the first half and eight in the second, the Ducks twice stormed back in front of 16,144 fans at Arco Arena.
During the Ducks’ second-half comeback, the key play came on an injury instead of a basket. Wake Forest guard Craig Dawson left the game with 7:45 left and the score 78-73 in favor of Wake Forest. Dawson’s scoring presence — he led the Deacons with 20 points despite his injury — was missed as the Ducks went on a 16-9 run and won the game.
“He’s a great player, and he does a lot for his team,” Jones said. “Once he came off the floor, it took a lot out of them.”
Over the game’s final minutes, Oregon was tough on defense and eye-popping on offense. Jones had two dunks, one on a rebound off a Jackson miss that made the crowd “ooh.” Then it was showed on the replay screen three times, and the crowd went “ooh” louder each time.
“Coach has been preaching to me to hit the offensive boards all year, and that was a time of the game when I thought it would be important to crash the offensive boards,” Jones said of his dunk. “It got the crowd into the game, and when you can hear that crowd, it just gives that little extra push to do well.”
But despite the high-flying offense, the Ducks stressed that their defense kept them in the game.
“Even though it was high-scoring, we got key stops at key times of the game,” Kent said.
“We needed some stops, and in the second half we got those stops,” Jackson said.
After Dawson went out, Wake Forest went five straight possessions without a point. Jones’ rebound dunk tied the game for the first time since the 18:15 mark of the second half.
In the first half, the teams started slow but soon set the blistering pace that would describe the rest of the game. Three minutes into the contest, Dawson hit a long three-pointer to make the score 7-4, and the two teams traded baskets on the next six possessions. By the end of the first half there had been seven ties and three lead changes.
Wake Forest “shot the lights out,” in the words of Jackson, in the first half. The Demon Deacons shot 55.9 percent from the floor and went 6-for-9 from three-point range.
“Our defense was slacking a little bit in the first half,” forward Robert Johnson said. “But we got it together in the second half.”
In the first half, the Ducks shot 47.1 percent and hit only five of the 14 treys they took.
Jackson tied his career high with 29 points to lead Oregon in scoring, while Ridnour had a career-high 28 points. Anthony Lever hit two free throws at the end of the game for the Ducks’ only two points from the bench.
The win propels Oregon into the Sweet 16, a place it hasn’t been since 1960. That season, the Ducks lost to California after beating New Mexico State and Utah. Oregon hasn’t been to the Elite Eight since 1939, when the Elite Eight wasn’t called that because it was actually the first round of the tournament. The Ducks won the inaugural NCAA Tournament that year. Their first-round victory was over Texas, by a final score of 56-41.
Oregon will face Texas at the Kohl Center in Madison on Friday.