The elevator ride was quiet, but the fear was as loud as can be.
In one corner stood a young, innocent freshman girl who shakily pressed the button for floor No. 7, the top floor of the University Inn, obeying the two mammoth hands that held up seven fingers behind her.
It was the fall of 1998, and the girl kept looking up at this 7-foot-2, stone-faced figure as if wondering where he came from.
And then, the two made eye contact, and the intimidating man spoke:
“Boo!”
The girl let out a frightened yelp, but before her knees could buckle, she was comforted by the larger-than-life man who allowed his hiding smile and engaging personality to come out.
The girl laughed, waited for the doors to open to her fifth floor, and said, “You scared me.”
The playful first-year college man from Roenne, Denmark, laughed back and replied, “Didn’t mean to. Have a good day.”

Kind vs. confident
There have always been two sides to Oregon junior center Chris Christoffersen.
The only problem for him was that, until recently, he had not revealed the side that made that freshman girl shake in her boots back then.
Instead, for the first two years of his college life, Christoffersen demonstrated that “teddy bear-like quality,” as his head coach, Ernie Kent put it. And in the fierce, competitive world of Pacific-10 Conference basketball, stuffed animals don’t cut it.
“He’s an extremely nice young man, and sometimes to a fault,” Kent said.
So, there Christoffersen sat, on the bench, throughout much of his freshman and sophomore campaigns.
“One of my main problems was that I’ve never been down or really upset about not playing,” said Christoffersen, who will be a major factor in tonight’s 7 p.m. tilt with UCLA at McArthur Court. “‘Cause I felt like I was accepting my role and sitting on the bench, and I got in this comfort zone of just going through the motions and not really contributing to the team.
“And then at the start of this season, it hit me. I’m a junior. This is embarrassing. I’ve been here for two years, and I need to do something to help out.”
With that mentality set, all Christoffersen needed was a confidence boost, and he got just that during Oregon’s 88-65 road victory against Louisville on Dec. 30. Christoffersen’s stats that game were not earth-shattering: five points, seven rebounds and one blocked shot in 17 minutes of play.
But during a seemingly normal moment in the first half, the Christoffersen that everyone had hoped to see finally emerged.
“I went up aggressively and pulled down the rebound and then just stared this [Louisville] guy down,” Christoffersen said. “That was the turning point because I just gained so much confidence after that one play.
“I said, ‘You know what, I can actually play with these guys.’”
Christoffersen, or “Big Chris” as he’s commonly referred to, slowly began to build his psyche up during the start of the Pac-10 season. He then made his presence felt with a career-high 11 points in the Ducks’ victory against Washington State on Jan. 20.
Then, when center Julius Hicks went down with a sprained ankle, Christoffersen exploded onto the scene in the next two games with an eight-point effort on the road against Southern California and a new career-high mark of 15 points against UCLA. He also showed off his defense in Oregon’s upset victory against Arizona when he blocked three shots, including one memorable stuff where he took the ball right out of 7-foot center Loren Woods’ hands on an attempted dunk.
Since then, he’s been a regular part of the rotation and someone that Kent feels comfortable with putting in.
“Chris can change the game,” Kent said. “The key thing for him is bringing it every game. When you give a 7-footer some confidence, there’s no telling what can happen. We’ve let him come at his own pace, and it’s nice to see that he’s getting there.”
Besides Christoffersen and his coach, the one who appears the most excited about the center’s emergence is junior guard Freddie Jones. The two came in together as freshmen, and Jones has known for quite some time how good a player Christoffersen could be.
Jones has encouraged and pushed the big man through the tough times and would like to see Christoffersen continue to reach his potential.
“Chris is unstoppable when he wants to be,” Jones said. “Early on his career, he was just happy-go-lucky and trying to be more of a teammate than an impact player. And now he’s realized that he’s better than a lot of people, and his game shows that.
“But I’ve seen a lot more from him that everybody else hasn’t yet.”
Christoffersen hasn’t been blind the past two years. He has felt the frustration from his coaches, teammates and fans. He has heard some of the snickers and he has read what the media has written about him.
“I’ve been tired of getting all those college basketball magazines every year and always reading about how big a disappointment I was, and, ‘Is Chris Christoffersen finally going to come this year?’” he said.
So it is with a great sigh of relief that he now runs down the court with a spring in his step and grabs a rebound or blocks a shot or takes it strong to the hoop for the score. And he is always humbled when he hears the Mac Court faithful chant his name, cheer him on or even wave flags of his home country as he plays.
“It’s just unbelievable how the fans have stayed behind me since freshman year,” Christoffersen said. “That’s what helps me out the most.”
And it’s also gratifying for “Big Chris” to not walk around from class to class and have some people view him as “The Big Nobody.”
“It’s been weird before, where I’ve walked around and people have been like, ‘Oh, you play for the Ducks? What’s your name again?’” Christoffersen said. “So it’s just so nice now to walk around campus and have people come up to me and tell me that they believe in me. It makes everything a lot easier when you have that support.”
But just because you may see that Christoffersen smile during the day, you can count on “the intimidation look,” as he put it, coming out for the remaining five games of the season, and for every contest of his senior season next year.
“I’m improved a little bit, but I’m still only 30 percent of my potential,” Christoffersen said. “So I’m not going to get too comfortable with where I’m at right now and just keep getting better, and keep up the aggression.
“I’m just so ready for everything now.”