The Washington Huskies continued their domination of the Oregon Ducks at Bank of America Arena Thursday night in Seattle, by outworking the Ducks down the stretch to win going away, 78-70.
“It’s no secret, and it seems like again every year we come up here they have so much more at stake and they just come out and play so hard,” said Oregon coach Ernie Kent in a post-game radio interview.
The Huskies did have more at stake, having dropped their first three conference games, and it showed, as the Huskies out-rebounded the Ducks 45-33.
“They came out and, to their credit, they won the hustle game and they won the rebound game,” Kent said. “Those are big.”
Washington (10-7, 1-3 Pac-10) led by 10 points, their largest lead of the game, with six minutes left to play, but Oregon would claw their way back. Maarty Leunen’s three-point play with 3:18 left drew the Ducks to within three at 68-65, but a Ryan Appleby three from the left wing and clutch free throw shooting by the Huskies would put the game out of reach for the Ducks.
Leunen led the Ducks in scoring, with 22 points and six rebounds on 8-of-9 shooting, and Malik Hairston followed with 20 points and six rebounds. Kent said that Leunen should have gotten more shots in the game and blamed his point guards, sophomore Tajuan Porter and freshman Kamyron Brown, for not executing the game plan.
“He (Leunen) should have had about 18 shots, not just nine shots,” Kent said. “And we talked about that in timeouts and we talked about it in huddles to get him more shots and I just didn’t think they (Porter and Brown) did a very good job of doing that.
“On the road you’ve got to have stellar point guard play. It has to be there. It just wasn’t as good as it needs to be and, consequently, the momentum of the game it turned in their favor.”
Porter, who finished with 10 points, made a few spectacular shots off the dribble in the game, but Kent was critical of the shot selection as Porter shot just 3-of-12 from the field.
“Point guard play becomes a situation where you’ve got to run a team,” he said. “Not so much get stuff for yourself but run a basketball team.”
Brown was a dismal 0-for-5 from the field while notching his season average five assists, and Kent said that Brown’s energy level was not where it needed to be, nor where it had been recently.
“I just told Kam in the locker room, ‘You’ve got to be consistent. You cannot have enormous energy down at Arizona, and then come home and have great energy, and then come on the road and be flat as a pancake.’ I mean, you just can’t do that,” Kent said. “I understand that that he’s a freshman and he’s just kind of up and down, but you needed the energized Kamyron Brown in this environment here and he didn’t show up. Then all of a sudden, right off the bat, you’re handcuffed as a coach when one of your key ingredients is not on his game and he’s not there.”
Jon Brockman led the Huskies with 21 points and 16 rebounds, and Appleby poured in 19 points on 7-of-12 shooting.
The road doesn’t get any easier for the Ducks, who head to Pullman to take on the No. 8 Washington State Cougars Sunday, 5 p.m., on Fox Sports Net.
“There’s going to be a lot of things they’re going to have to deal with over there,” Kent said. “They’ve got a senior group and we’ve beat them 13 straight, whether it’s at home or on the road, and they’re not going to want to lose to us again over there in that building. It’s going to be a tough environment over there.”