To borrow a metaphor from football, the Oregon men split the Pac-10 uprights in the opening weekend of conference play.
But enough about football.
The Oregon men’s basketball squad capped off its winter break by blowing out Arizona State, 94-73, at McArthur Court, two days after it lost a hard-fought contest to No. 4 Arizona, 81-72. After a 9-1 preseason, the Ducks are now 10-2 and headed feet-first into the Pacific-10 Conference season.
“We needed to go through a Pac-10 weekend at home, because it has forced us to grow,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said. “We had some adversity that we had to deal with, we fought through the adversity.”
Over the Pac-10 opening weekend, Oregon played 57 minutes of stellar basketball, but it was the other 23 minutes that cost the Ducks one game and had them reeling at halftime of the other contest.
Oregon led Arizona by 10 points and 11 points at separate junctures in the second half of Thursday’s contest. But the Wildcats whittled away at the Ducks and took their first lead of the second frame at 68-67 with 3:50 remaining.
“We lost our composure,” Oregon guard Andre Joseph said.
With the game tied at 70 and 2:13 remaining, Arizona seniors Jason Gardner and Rick Anderson hit back-to-back three-pointers to put the Wildcats up by six points with 1:21 left. The sellout crowd of 9,087 sat in stunned silence and the Ducks never recovered.
“They had a lot of energy out there, that’s why they were the preseason
No. 1,” Kent said.
The Ducks were out-rebounded by the Wildcats 50-28 on Thursday, leading Kent to compare the game to Oregon’s loss to Kansas in the Elite Eight of the NCAA Tournament last season.
Oregon carried its lethargy into Saturday’s contest with Arizona State. In front of another sellout Mac Court crowd, the Ducks started slow and went into halftime losing 39-33.
“We were yelling in the locker room, we knew we had to pick it up,” said Oregon forward Jay Anderson, who had a career-high 10 points in the game.
In the second half, buoyed by strong performances from Anderson and Matt Short off the bench, the Ducks did pick it up, big time. They shot 80.8 percent in the second frame, at one point going on a 21-0 run to blow out the Sun Devils. Oregon was led in the second half by Luke Ridnour, who had a poor game against Arizona, turning the ball over eight times and scoring 16 points.
But Ridnour made up for it with a 24-point, 7-assist performance against
Arizona State.
“Rid just kind of took over the game with about 10 minutes left,” Anderson said. “He was driving the lane, and nobody could stop him.”
As Oregon heads into the Pac-10 season, the Ducks have already given fans a blueprint for what to watch over the rest of the season. Ridnour and Luke Jackson have led the team, as expected. Ridnour is averaging 19.3 points per game, good enough for second in the league, and leads the Pac-10 in assists with 6.8 per game. Jackson is scoring 17.5 points per game and leads the team with 7.1 rebounds per contest.
But Oregon wouldn’t be a 10-2 team without its role players. Perhaps most surprising has been the emergence of Joseph, a junior college transfer who has made a big impression on Kent with his scrappy play.
“He’s an energy guy,” Kent said of Joseph. “He brings us to another level.”
As far as other newcomers, Ian Crosswhite had an impressive preseason but struggled against Arizona, going 2-of-12 from the floor in the loss. He also struggled in the first half against Arizona State, and Kent sat him out for the second half.
“He’s stepping up onto a big stage for the first time,” Kent said of Crosswhite. “It’s going to take a little more time.”
Anderson and Short, the other big men in the Oregon equation, came out in the second half of the ASU game and should see more playing time in the future.
The next step in the Ducks’ season is a trip to the Bay Area to visit California and Stanford, two places where Oregon lost early in the season last year. California beat Stanford on Saturday to temporarily take the Bay Area crown, and the Golden Bears have been on a roll this season. Their two losses came at the hands of Kansas and Georgia. Stanford, meanwhile, has struggled this year. The Cardinal’s loss to the Bears was their fourth of the young season.