PORTLAND — As Oregon guard Aaron Brooks hustled back on defense to swat away Vanderbilt guard Mario Moore’s layup early in the first half of Saturday’s Papé Jam, it stirred up a bittersweet memory for fellow Oregon guard Jordan Kent.
Sitting on the bench, Kent was reminded of when his teammate had run the same defense on him at a recent practice.
“I picked the ball up at
half court and decided to not go up that hard at all,” Kent said about the practice. “(Brooks) read it perfectly in my right
hand and basically swatted it out of bounds.”
As long as Brooks can apply his skills to opposing teams’ players, Kent said getting blocked by his teammate is no big deal.
“When he’s on my team, then shoot, I don’t care at all,” Kent said. “I don’t mind him doing that to me in practice as long as he does it in games.”
That type of defensive effort by the Ducks helped them pull away from Vanderbilt in the second half en route to a 75-65 victory at the Rose Garden.
Brooks had two blocks in the game, both served on attempted layups by Moore. Kent said those kind of “energy plays” are needed when a game — or a team — gets sluggish, the way the Ducks had been after committing 14 first-half turnovers.
“Once we get the energy going and the crowd going and start running up and down the floor, plays like that are huge,” Kent said.
Vanderbilt head coach Kevin Stallings said Moore was probably bothered by the blocks, but needs to forget about those kinds of plays in future games.
“If you’ve never had your
shot blocked, then you haven’t played college basketball,” Stallings said. “There wasn’t
a guy on that court, I don’t think, who has never had
their shot blocked, so he just
has to come back and know
he’s going up against those kind of athletes.”
Kent and Brooks led the
defensive surge in the second half. The Ducks employed a shorter
lineup that featured the 6-foot-5 Kent at the power forward spot.
Oregon held Vanderbilt to just 15 points during the first 15 minutes of the second half with the short lineup, which also included guards Malik Hairston and Bryce Taylor and center Ian Crosswhite. Crosswhite was the only Duck on the floor taller than 6-foot-6.
“They (the Ducks) were the
aggressor for more minutes in the game than we were,” Stallings said. “We hit that stretch in the second half where we couldn’t get any points. We were just stuck there, and their defense forced us into things that we didn’t want.
“We certainly give them credit; they outplayed us.”
One of the Commodores’ top
offensive players in the game,
forward Julian Terrell, had 14 points in the first half but was unable to score after halftime.
For the game, Vanderbilt was held to just 39.1 percent shooting from the field. It marked the fourth-straight game that the Ducks have held an opponent to less than 40
percent field goal shooting.
“To hold them to the numbers that we did was, I thought, fantastic,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said.
Kent mentioned that his team’s defensive efforts early in the season have demonstrated how athletic his players are and how much depth they have.
“We can do a lot of things, and we have a lot of versatility on this team,” Kent said.
For the season, Oregon has held
opponents to just 39.3 percent field goal shooting, while the Ducks have shot 52.1 percent through four games.

Alex Tam is a freelance reporter for the Daily Emerald