On Saturday afternoon, Oregon men’s basketball suffered a brutal, close loss in the second leg of its two-game Bay Area roadtrip in a 69-64 battle with Cal. Oregon spent almost 30 minutes in the lead. 

The Ducks failed to contain Cal’s star guards Jaylon Tyson and Jalen Cone, whose electric offense in the second half sparked the Golden Bears to take the lead late in the game and hold it until the end. 

Tyson finished with 27 points, seven rebounds, two blocks and a steal, while Cone had 15 points — but did not shoot well until late in the game. 

The Golden Bears took the lead with just over 11 minutes to go in the game, after which their strong defense and Oregon’s failure to hit shots consistently took over the game. 

The first half can be described by the fact that Oregon took just two 3-pointers, only making one. The half ended tied 34-34, but it was clear that the Ducks had little to offer on offense, while Cal was simply not making shots.

In the first frame, the Ducks shot 48% from the field and got production all across the board. Four players scored over five points, most notably Jermaine Couisnard’s nine points on 3-5 shooting, along with 3-4 free-throws. 

Couisnard finished the game with 19 points, but he scored much less efficiently as the game went on and shot 5-13 from the field. He also went 8-10 from the line, only one less than the entire Cal team took. 

The Ducks shot 23 free-throws compared to the Golden Bears’ 11. 

Of those 23 shots from the line, 14 came in the second half. Oregon’s reliance on getting fouled ultimately hurt its ability to string together runs and control the momentum when leading.

Throughout the second half, Oregon scored two field goals in a row just once. This happened right before Cal started its own 10-0 run in which it took the lead for the last 11:23 of the game. 

As soon as the Golden Bears started shooting well, the Ducks shut down offensively. They played good enough defense on everyone except Cone and Tyson, who scored 13 and 16 in the second half. 

Compared to their two attempts from deep in the first, the Ducks went 3-16 from beyond the arc in the second. Overall, they shot 23% from the field in the latter half on Saturday. 

Hitting four 3’s in the game is not a sustainable way to win a game, no matter who the team is. Cal didn’t shoot the three well either, but it shot much better than Oregon did, which is an important distinction in just a five-point game. 

The Ducks were also within one possession of the Golden Bears multiple times, but they didn’t put together enough of their own momentum to take another lead. 

Oregon didn’t score a field goal in the last four minutes of the game, which proved to be the nail in the coffin for the Ducks’ chances at winning this one. 

If Oregon is to finish the season positively and have a chance at March Madness, it needs to start hitting shots down the stretch, as droughts in the second half are all too common.