For the first 22 minutes of Saturday’s game against Arizona State, Oregon played like the much-hyped group of athletes the public was informed about in October.
For the game’s final 18 minutes, however, the Ducks looked like the same inexperienced bunch that has stumbled its way through the last month of Pacific-10 Conference play.
After building a 38-25 lead two minutes into the second half, the Oregon men’s basketball team was outscored 41-18 and fell to Arizona State, 66-56, at Wells Fargo Arena in Tempe.
Steve Moore scored 17 of his 22 points in the second half to spark the Sun Devil comeback, including a three-pointer with less than 12 minutes remaining to tie the score at 42.
The teams traded baskets for the next five minutes as the Ducks (12-11 overall, 4-10 Pac-10) grabbed a 53-50 lead on a Brandon Lincoln dunk with 7:20 remaining. From that point, the Sun Devils (18-9, 7-8) closed the game on a
16-3 run, with Moore and Ike Diogu scoring 12 of the 16 points.
Oregon was held scoreless for more than five minutes down the stretch, with its only field goal during the game’s final seven minutes coming on a Malik Hairston putback with 32.6 seconds remaining.
“It was a frustrating loss,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said after the game. “I thought we had complete control of the game at one point in the second half.”
Oregon was once again plagued by turnovers. The Ducks finished with 19 giveaways — compared with only six by the Sun Devils — and turned the ball over on their first three possessions of the game.
Aaron Brooks, Bryce Taylor and Hairston combined for 14 turnovers.
When Oregon wasn’t turning the ball over, it was hampered by missed free throws. The Ducks turned in another pathetic performance from the foul line, connecting on only 6 of 16 freebies. Arizona State, on the other hand, capitalized on its opportunities, knocking down 17 of 25 foul shots.
Many of the Sun Devils’ trips to the foul line were a result of poor post defense by the Ducks. Oregon routinely double-teamed Diogu down low, and the Duck big men continued to reach in and slap at the ball, forcing officials to blow their whistles.
“We let (Arizona State) back into the game with as poorly as we played in terms of our intelligence on the defensive end of the floor,” Kent said. “When we had Ike in double-teams, (we didn’t execute).”
Kent went on to say he didn’t agree with the officiating but also said it was not an excuse for the Ducks’ poor second-half play.
“(The game) was very poorly called, I thought,” Kent said. “I think they’ll go back and see that we just got hammered inside, and sometimes I thought we were in position and Ike just kind of bowled us over and there were no calls.
“But you can’t blame (the loss) on officiating. I told the guys that officiating is going to be officiating, you’ve gotta play through that stuff and not worry about that. When it’s all said and done, we turned the basketball over and there weren’t fouls in those situations and there weren’t fouls that made us (miss free throws).”
Hairston led Oregon with 18 points and grabbed 11 rebounds. Brooks added 17 points, while Taylor finished with seven points.
Diogu finished with a game-high 23 points for Arizona State, while Serge Angounou grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds.

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