BERKELEY, Calif. — Two nights after a tough overtime loss, the Oregon men’s basketball team went to two overtimes, lost their second straight game and dropped to second in the
Pacific-10 Conference.
Now, the Ducks have only two road games left to prove they can win away from McArthur Court.
The number “two” also pops up on the jersey of Amit Tamir (No. 24), the California freshman who set a Golden Bear rookie record by scoring 39 points against No. 13 Oregon (17-7 overall, 9-4 Pac-10) Saturday night.
Tamir led the Bears (17-5, 8-4) to a 107-103 double-overtime win that revitalized a mediocre Cal team and knocked the Ducks out of the Pac-10 lead, where they had sat for three previous weeks.
“We had two winnable ball games” this weekend, Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said, also referring to Thursday’s 90-87 overtime loss at Stanford. “We just needed another play or two in crunch time to get it done. But we didn’t get it done, so the key thing for us right now is to go home and re-group.”
Saturday’s game was won at the beginning of the second extra period, when the Golden Bears hit three big shots to pull away and put away the Ducks.
The first two came from Tamir, who hit a layup and a three-pointer, both with two seconds on the shot clock. Those baskets put Cal up 94-89, and Golden Bear point guard Shantay Legans hit a three on the next possession — this time with six ticks on the shot clock — to put Cal ahead by eight.
Oregon guard Freddie Jones scored 23 points in the game, but said he felt responsible for the defensive lapse at the beginning of the second overtime.
“I was guarding Tamir; I let him get loose,” Jones said. “I’ll take the loss on my shoulders.”
Oregon’s Luke Jackson, who scored a career-high 29 points, had a chance to pull the Ducks within one point with 8.2 seconds left, but missed two free throws. Tamir made a free throw at the California end to seal the Golden Bear win.
Tamir was a thorn in Oregon’s side all game long, hitting 14 of the 19 shots he took, including 5-of-6 three pointers. The Ducks have seen several big performances from opposing individuals this season, including 41 points from Stanford’s Casey Jacobsen on Thursday night, 35 from Washington State’s Marcus Moore, 32 from Jacobsen in January, and 30 from Washington’s Doug Wrenn.
Tamir’s previous career high was 19, scored against Oregon
in January.
“The rim looked so big tonight,” Tamir said. “Everything I threw up went in.”
For most of the first half, the Ducks had a similarly big rim. Oregon started the game with a 10-5 run and built the lead to 45-26 with 2:22 left in the first frame. The Ducks ended the half shooting 66.7 percent from the floor.
But as soon as Oregon went up by 19, California started chipping the Ducks’ lead back to zero. Tamir scored seven straight points at the end of the first half to bring the score to 48-35, and the Golden Bears started the second half as strong as they ended the first. A three-pointer from forward Joel Shipp with 13:24 pulled the Bears within five.
With the Haas Pavilion crowd going wild and 11:38 on the clock, Legans hit an NBA-range three-pointer to put California ahead for the first time, 61-58.
“We knew we should have been playing better than we played in the first half,” Legans said. “We knew we just had to battle.”
The teams did battle all the way down the stretch until the final seconds, when Oregon’s Jones had a chance to win the game in regulation. With less than 10 seconds left and the score tied at 82, Jones collected the rebound on a Legans miss, drove down the court and missed a floater from eight feet out.
In the first overtime, the Ducks had another chance to win after Cal almost handed the game away. With less than 10 seconds left, Legans passed to forward Ryan Forehan-Kelly, who mishandled the ball out of bounds with 2.1 seconds on the clock. Jackson sent the ensuing inbounds pass all the way to halfcourt, where Jones collected it, got to the three-point line and launched a shot with two defenders in his face. The shot hit the front iron, and the game remained tied at 89 and headed for a second overtime.
Kent was able to put the loss into perspective.
“We’re heartbroken,” Kent said. “But it’s not like we’re a bad basketball team. We’ll rebound.”
Oregon is now 13-0 at home, 4-7 away from McArthur Court and 2-4 on the road in the conference. The Ducks have only two remaining away games, against UCLA and Southern California at the end of the season.
Oregon returns home to face Oregon State in the second installment of this year’s Civil War on Saturday.