STANFORD, Calif. — Luke Ridnour hobbled through a tunnel at Maples Pavilion after answering themedia’s questions Saturday night, his head down, leaning on assistant coach Mark Hudson forsupport.
He found his way to the basketball floor, where his parents were waiting for him. They gave him abig, long hug.
He needed it.
Despite Ridnour’s best efforts, No. 10 Oregon was blown out of the Bay Area, suffering its secondloss of its first Pacific-10 Conference road trip of the season. This one was an 81-57 loss toStanford in front of a national television audience and 7,034 fans in Palo Alto, but it felteerily similar to the Ducks’ loss Thursday in Berkeley.
Opponent lights it up. Oregon can’t respond. Ducks get buried early.
You know it’s bad when the normally soft-spoken Ridnour says this: “We’re pissed off. We got ourass kicked twice in a row on this trip.”
Indeed. Oregon went down by 10 points eight minutes into Saturday’s contest and never puttogether an offensive run to get back into the game. The Ducks shot just 33.3 percent from thefloor, and Ridnour was the only Oregon player to score in double digits. He had 19 points in 33minutes, despite spraining his left ankle in the California game.
“Mentally, we’re all down. I know I’m down,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said. “Physically, Ican’t say enough about Luke Ridnour. But we’re a little banged up.”
Oregon was banged up on the boards all night by Stanford, another item to file in the “brokenrecord” category. The Ducks were out-rebounded 45-26 by the Cardinal.
Stanford’s victory over Oregon was its third in three tries against ranked opponents this season.The Cardinal moved to 11-4 overall and 2-1 in the Pac-10 with the victory. Oregon moved to 10-4,1-3 in the Pac-10 and possibly out of the national rankings.
The Ducks also failed to break their Maples Pavilion curse. Oregon hasn’t won at Maples since1986.
“We’ve had success in every other environment but this one,” said Kent, who was an assistant coachat Stanford.
Of course, Stanford might have something to do with that. The Cardinal shot exactly 50 percentfrom the field but went 11-for-19, or 57.9 percent, from 3-point land. Julius Barnes led theway for Stanford with 17 points, and four Cardinal players scored more than 13. Center Rob Littlewas a presence inside, and he came up with three of Stanford’s eight blocks and pulled down ninerebounds.
Stanford also played lockdown defense on most of the Oregon team, especially Luke Jackson, whoscored a season-low seven points. Jackson was guarded for most of the night by Nick Robinson, asophomore forward starting for the first time in his career after junior Justin Davis went downwith an injury.
“Not to take anything away from Stanford, but I thought that was more Luke Jackson shutting downLuke Jackson,” Kent said. “But we’re going to sit down and look at some things, and he’s a smartenough player where he’ll be able to learn from this.”
Kent can hope his team is also smart enough to learn from two blowout losses in the span ofthree days.
“Sometimes you need to get slapped upside the head in order to come back stronger,” Kent said.
Kent is also trying to shake things up — slap his team upside the head? — by switching his lineupsaround. For Saturday’s contest, he replaced the struggling James Davis and Brian Helquist withAndre Joseph and Matt Short in the starting lineup. Joseph had eight points and seven rebounds in33 minutes, while Short also had eight points but fouled out of the game.
“I’m jacked up; I’ll probably be jacked up for awhile,” Joseph said of starting for the firsttime. “But this isn’t a one-man team. We just got to play better as a team.”
In the end, the word that came up the most after the game was “toughness.”
“Both those teams were tougher, more physical than us,” Kent said.
“It’s a matter of getting tough,” Short said.
“We’re just getting out-toughed,” Ridnour said.
And Ridnour, the only Oregon tough guy on the floor Saturday night, got exactly what the rest ofthe team needed after two big Bay Area losses.
A big hug. It’s nice even for a tough guy.
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