What was next? The Duck hitting a three? The guys with the Mickey-Mouse gloves coming out of the Pit Crew to drain treys?
It seemed like everyone was hitting threes at McArthur Court on Saturday. Robert Johnson hit a three. Even the Outback Three-Point Thriller guy drilled five threes in 30 seconds.
In the game, Oregon hit 14 of 22 three-pointers, burying UCLA 79-48 on the strength of a perimeter game that will have to be strong again when the Ducks hit the NCAA Tournament.
“When we’re shooting the ball like that, obviously we’re a very difficult team to beat,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said. “We’ve shot like that before. I think the impressive thing in this game was not so much the shooting but the fact that we had 22 assists on 27 buckets. That allows them to have good shooting, because that means they’re making the extra pass, and usually when we make the extra pass, we take good shots, and when we take good shots, we’re a very good shooting team.”
Oregon set the tone for the firey-hot shooting night by hitting three three-pointers on three of its first four possessions. On the second possession, point guard Luke Ridnour fed James Davis for a three, and when Davis connected, Ridnour looked to the Mac Court roof and yelled as the sold-out crowd erupted around him.

The Ducks went up 19-2 and used five three-pointers to get there.
Later in the game, with the win secure, Kent ran a designed play to get his senior forward, Johnson, open for a three.
“If you’ve seen our practices, we have a lot of shooting games where he shoots the three, and he can shoot it,” Kent said.
With 3:26 left in the game, Johnson came off a screen, got the ball at the top of the key and popped off a shot, which tickled the net for the only three-pointer of his career. He held three fingers in the air as he ran back down the court, smiling.
“I suggested it earlier in the game, I was like ‘I’m feeling it a little bit!’” Johnson said. “We ran it for Brian (Helquist); we wanted to both get one. But he never got open.”
On the next few possessions, Helquist tried to get open for three, but never was able to. But on the possession after Johnson’s three, Ridnour found a slashing Helquist for a lay-in.
“I’m not worried about it,” Helquist said about not getting a three.
Kent, who pulled the seniors out with 2:14 left, said he wanted to give the departing players a going-away present of sorts.
“I thought it was a great send-off, and no disrespect to UCLA or anything else,” Kent said. “More so than anything else, it was about Robert and it was about Brian Helquist.”
But Oregon’s three-point barrage was also, in part, about the postseason. The Ducks have an almost mathematical formula for winning and losing, which Kent alluded to. When the Ducks can get assists on almost every basket, get open looks and hit their shots, they win. When the shots don’t fall or Oregon is forced into one-on-one situations, the Ducks don’t always win.
A case in point was the preseason loss to Cincinnati in East Rutherford, N.J. In the 77-52 loss, Oregon had 15 assists but shot 36.4 percent from the field for the game. In Saturday’s win over the Bruins, the Ducks shot 47.4 percent and had 22 assists. Oregon shot 18.5 percent from three-point land in the Cincinnati loss, but shot 58.3 percent from three Saturday.
Those 40 percentage points could be the difference between a win and a loss at the NCAA Tournament, in which the Ducks all but secured a berth with Saturday’s win. Three-point shooting teams have traditionally done well in March Madness.
Of course, if Oregon goes cold from three in the tournament, the team can always just recruit the Outback guy. He was pretty hot from three Saturday.