If you can’t beat ’em, beat the crap out of ’em.
That was Arizona’s philosophy Saturday afternoon in Tucson, where the No. 1 Wildcats beat up Oregon’s star, Luke Ridnour, and eventually beat up the Ducks, 88-80. Ridnour fouled out late in the game, and because not many fouls were called against Arizona’s physical defense, head coach Ernie Kent said the officiating in the game was “horrible.”
“They beat the crap out of Ridnour out there,” Kent told KUGN-AM after the game. “I felt so bad, because they wouldn’t even let him move or run anywhere. And that’s unfortunate because that’s wrong.”
Kent called the officiating the worst he’s ever seen in Tucson.
“This was the worst because this team got beat up, and those officials were horrible in this game,” Kent said.
The loss leaves Oregon with 20 wins on the regular season, which should still put the Ducks in the NCAA Tournament. And Saturday’s loss didn’t do much to hurt Oregon’s March Madness seed, because the Ducks were able to hang with Arizona for most of the contest.
Oregon held the lead as late as 9:30 into the second half. But Arizona went on a run — as top-ranked teams tend to do — to effectively put Oregon away. The Wildcats’ run was 17-2 before Oregon’s Ian Crosswhite hit two free throws to make the score 69-58 in Arizona’s favor with 6.29 left. Wildcats Salim Stoudamire and Jason Gardner hit their free throws down the stretch to keep Oregon from getting any closer than the final margin of eight points.
“We did everything right in this game, I thought,” Kent said. “We had four guys in double figures, we out-rebounded them, I thought it was a great defensive effort on our part. But the game got away.”
Before Arizona’s run, the Ducks had the Wildcats on the proverbial ropes behind Ridnour’s leadership.
The junior guard broke Oregon’s single-season assists record with his third assist of the game, which gave him 185 on the season. He ended the game with seven assists and a team-high 26 points.
On Arizona’s Senior Night, Gardner, a senior who has played the most minutes of any Wildcat ever, spearheaded the Arizona attack. He bested Ridnour with 27 points. Gardner left with Luke Walton late in the game to a standing ovation from the crowd of 14,589 at the McKale Center.
The Ducks, headed to the Pacific-10 Conference Tournament, need to beat a team they lost to on Thursday — Arizona State. The Ducks and Sun Devils will square off Thursday in Los Angeles in the first round of the conference tourney. Kent said he’s confident in his team’s ability to win a game he said the Ducks need to win.
“If we had played Thursday like we played tonight, we would have won that game,” Kent said of Thursday’s 91-77 loss in Tempe.
Thursday’s game will tip off at approximately 3:30 p.m. All the games in the Pac-10 Tournament will be broadcast on Fox Sports Net.
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