Coach Kent had a message for his basketball team Saturday morning, on the heels of one of the worst losses in program history to Stanford Thursday, 72-43.
His message to the team over breakfast Saturday was a simple one: You can’t play basketball with a backpack on.
“There’s a lot of garbage, and we called it what’s in your backpack,” said Kent in a radio interview after the game. “We said, ‘We’ve got to unload our backpacks.’ Because you can’t come out here and play with a backpack on and you can’t even get out of the locker room door if we piled all those backpacks at the door.”
Kent was referring to distractions and other emotional baggage he felt were holding his players back. He said that the team took the cue from him and ran with it, going around the room with each player talking about what was “in their backpack” that they needed to leave behind to play well.
“It was an amazing thing to me, as we went around the room and talked about what garbage is in our backpacks, just how much fear was in the room. How many guys talked about fearing,” said Kent. “You have to teach them to let go of that stuff because obviously that’s not a good place… if fear has snuck into their hearts.”
So the Ducks unloaded their backpacks, and then unloaded on California, making a school-record 18 three-pointers and shooting 80 percent from the field in the second half to pull away for a 92-70 victory over the Golden Bears at Haas Pavilion.
Oregon got off to a quick start, jumping to an 8-0 lead on threes from Tajuan Porter and Malik Hairston and a driving layup by Bryce Taylor, but California whittled away at the lead and even claimed it back when a Nican Robinson three-pointer put them ahead 19-18 at the midway point of the first half. The teams would trade buckets down the stretch of the first half, with Oregon leading 34-32 at the break.
Taylor, who led all scorers with 28 in the game on 10-of-13 shooting, scored the first seven points for the Ducks in the second half. Then Porter, second in the game with 23 points, hit four-straight from beyond the arc. When the dust settled, the Ducks led 53-38 and would never look back, stretching the lead to as many as 23 points.
Hairston would score 15 points while adding five rebounds, five assists and three blocks and Maarty Leunen turned in another double-double, with 17 points and 11 rebounds.
“They came together, and it was something to see,” said Kent. “It was no great defensive scheme or no great offensive scheme, all they did was freed up their minds.”
Kent said earlier in the week that he was looking forward to getting out on the road, because he thought it would give the players a chance to come together as a team, through adversity and hostile environments. The defeat at the hands of the Cardinal may have been rock bottom, possibly a crucial turning point for this team.
“It was an embarrassment for our program what happened at Stanford,” said Kent. “Never in my wildest dreams did I think we’d get beat by 30 at Stanford, but maybe that was the beating we need to really get to the point to find ourselves.”
And despite the baggage that was being dumped before the game at Cal, Taylor said the ugly loss to Stanford still weighed heavily on the team.
“It weighed heavily because we were embarrassed down there, and for as much preparation and as much hard work as we put into it, for us to just look like we had never played the game out there before was disappointing,” he said.
But if it weighed on the Ducks’ minds early, the burden eased when the shots started falling.
“Once everybody starts hitting shots it’s contagious,” said Taylor. “It’s almost the exact opposite of Thursday, because it seemed like missing shots became contagious, so it was kind of ironic to see it working the other way tonight.”
The Ducks return to McArthur Court Thursday, to take on the Washington Huskies, who are riding high on their victory over the UCLA Bruins Sunday afternoon in Seattle. Kent said he hopes the lesson the Ducks learned Saturday about freeing up their minds from distractions to play their best basketball will follow them down the stretch.
“It’s pretty amazing to me when you give kids an opportunity to express really what’s in their hearts, particularly men, just what a profound statement and how powerful that can be, and that’s what you were a witness to today,” said Kent. “Hopefully they’ll use it and we can build on it from here.”
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