Oregon head coach Ernie Kent led his team to the front of the Pacific-10 Conference this season, and he was rewarded as the conference’s Coach of the Year Wednesday night.
Duck senior guard Freddie Jones and sophomore point guard Luke Ridnour were named to the 10-member All-Pac-10 Team in the same ceremony. Oregon sophomore forward Luke Jackson received an All-Pac-10 honorable mention.
Jones was considered a candidate for the Pac-10 Player of the Year award, but that honor went instead to Southern California’s Sam Clancy. Arizona’s Salim Stoudamire, a Portland native, was named the Pac-10 Freshman of the Year.
Kent took last season’s 14-14 Oregon team and made it into a 22-7 conference champion this season, leading to his selection as coach of the year. The former Duck player has a 90-56 overall record in five seasons as Oregon’s head coach.
The award was the first such honor for Kent, who was also named by the United States Basketball Writers Association as the District IX Coach of the Year on Tuesday. It was the first Pac-10 Coach of the Year honor given to an Oregon coach since Dick Harter received the award in 1977.
Jones earned All-Pac-10 honors for the first time in his career. The senior from Gresham started every game this season, averaging 18.6 points to lead the Ducks in scoring.
This year’s award marked the second in two years for Ridnour, who was last season’s Freshman of the Year. He joined Stanford’s Casey Jacobsen, Arizona’s Jason Gardner and UCLA’s Jason Kapono as former Freshmen of the Year to make this season’s All-Pac-10 Team.
Rounding out the all-conference team were Arizona’s Luke Walton, Stanford’s Curtis Borchardt, Arizona State’s Chad Prewitt and Washington’s Doug Wrenn.
Joining Jackson as honorable mentions were USC’s David Bluthenthal and Brandon Granville, UCLA’s Dan Gadzuric, California’s Joe Shipp and Washington State’s Marcus Moore.
Joining Stoudamire on the All-Freshman team were his Wildcat teammate Channing Frye, California’s Amit Tamir and Jamal Sampson, USC’s Errick Craven and honorable mentions Cedric Bozeman of UCLA, Josh Childress of Stanford and Chris Hernandez, also from Stanford.
All the awards handed out Wednesday night were voted on by the 10 conference coaches. The ceremony took place in Los Angeles, where eight conference teams will start play in the Pac-10 Tournament today.