The Oregon men’s basketball season is far from its finish line. The Ducks have four regular-season games left, including this weekend’s games with Washington State and Washington, a Pacific-10 Conference Tournament and the NCAA Tournament waiting for them.
Then why does this weekend seem to have so much closure to it?
For one, this weekend’s games mark the last home contests for six players and one student manager. For another, the Ducks (18-7 overall, 10-4 Pac-10) have a chance to finish a home season 16-0 for the first time since 1938. Finally, Oregon will have a chance to wreak revenge on a Washington team that edged the Ducks in
Seattle, 97-92.
“There’s a lot of hype surrounding this weekend,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said at McArthur Court on Wednesday. “But it’s all positive hype. This building should be alive for these basketball games.”
That Mac Court atmosphere has led to an unblemished home record for the Ducks this season. Oregon has gone undefeated at home only three times, in the 1911-12, 1925-26 and 1937-38 seasons. The latter season was the only one with 16 home games. The Ducks won seven in 1911 and six in 1926.
“It’s one of the miniature goals we’ve set for ourselves,” Kent said about going 16-0. “Now that we’re within two games of that, we’re certainly focusing in on it.”
While the home streak doesn’t come close to rivaling the sheer magnitude of the football teams’ Autzen Stadium streak or the recently-ended 53-game home streak of the Michigan State basketball team, it is impressive in small terms. The Oregon home streak is currently the longest in the Pac-10 and longer even than some national powers, including Duke, Cincinnati and Florida.
The Ducks’ longest home-winning streak ever was 23 games, spanning three seasons from 1937 to 1939. The Ducks won 15 in a row in 1926 and 1927.

Senior Sayonara
Oregon will say farewell to seven seniors this weekend. Six are players — Freddie Jones, Chris Christoffersen, Anthony Lever, Ben Lindquist, Mark Michaelis and Kristian Christensen — and one is a manager, Greg Lawrence. The players will be honored in a ceremony prior to Saturday’s contest with Washington.
But as important as the formal ceremonies will be the on-court ceremonies, where some of the younger players say they will try to send off the seniors in style.
“The seniors have given up a lot of things for this program, so we want to win these last two to give something back to them,” sophomore forward Luke Jackson said.
“To go 16-0 at home your senior year is really impressive,” sophomore guard Luke Ridnour said. “We want to send those seniors out of here like that.”
The senior class is led by Jones, who is currently on eight different Oregon all-time top-10 statistical lists. No other Duck in history can make that claim.
Christoffersen has left his mark on the all-time Oregon blocks list. Despite not starting consistently until this season, “Big Chris” ranks seventh all-time in blocks and will move into sixth with two more.
Lever has been on fire from three-point land this season, and will leave his mark on the record books that way. Lever is on pace to break the single-season three-point efficiency mark at 49 percent.

Poll-land
Oregon moved a little this week in the two nationally-respected polls, the Associated Press and ESPN/USA Today Coaches polls, after a blowout win over Oregon State on Saturday. The Ducks moved up two places to 15th in the AP poll and one spot to 17th in the coaches poll.
But that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been movement in other polls. ESPN.com runs a “Power 16” poll, ranking the top 16 teams in the country by seeds. Oregon was a fourth seed, after Stanford knocked them out of the pool of No. 3 seeds this week.
And in another official Poll That Doesn’t Matter, the nation’s fans continue to disrespect the Ducks. ESPN.com’s fan poll has the Ducks ranked 18th nationally, behind Wake Forest, which is ranked 20th and 21st in the national polls.
Switching gears to local polls, television station KEZI is finally going to let you get that burning opinion off your chest. They know you’ve been thinking about it.
From the KEZI Web site: “Do you think Ernie Kent should force Luke (Ridnour) and Luke (Jackson) to get haircuts, or do you like the shaggy look?”
You can finally make your voice heard.