As Kel’el Ware slowly walked towards the bench, Dana Altman let him have it.
The Oregon men’s basketball head coach was displeased with his center’s fight on the defensive end. Altman held up three fingers as he berated Ware, signifying the trio of offensive rebounds and putbacks he had conceded to Arizona forward Azuolas Tubelis since checking into the game.
“We gave up a lot of easy baskets,” Altman said. “Tubelis really got it going, went to his strengths and we couldn’t slow him down.”
Ware wasn’t the only defender who struggled against Tubelis on Thursday, as he put up a career-high 40 points in the Wildcats’ 91-76 win over the Ducks. Time and again, the Lithuanian big-man found space for his preferred left-handed layup or hook-shot. He worked within the flow of the offense, scoring off pocket passes from Kerr Kriisa.
While Oregon (13-10, 7-5) put together a respectable offensive performance, that same effort wasn’t mirrored on the defensive side. The Ducks lacked discipline as defenders failed to stay on the ground on Tubelis’s pump-fakes and were late shuffling their feet on his dribble drives.
Centers N’Faly Dante and Nate Bittle found themselves in early foul trouble, which made matters worse.
By halftime, the Ducks trailed by 15, yet the game still felt within reach as they had shot 39% from three-point range.
“I thought if we could have got it under 10 we might have had an opportunity,” Altman said. “Just couldn’t get it under 10.”
Each time they did make a slight push, there was Tubelis taking advantage of Oregon defenders in foul trouble, scared to hear another whistle.
The Ducks made a push out of halftime, as Will Richardson’s left wing three cut the score to 54-44. It seemed as if they had found something. They had switched into a 1-3-1 zone defense, which forced three errant Wildcat passes to open the second half.
But following that Richardson three, Tubelis found the soft spot in the zone on subsequent possessions. He positioned himself on the right block, received an entry pass from Kriisa and kissed a floater off the glass. The next time down, he snuck behind Dante to the same spot and got the dump-down from Oumar Ballo to push the margin back to 14.
It wasn’t just Tubelis’s prowess that made the Wildcats’ lead tough to surmount. It was their ability to weave through Oregon’s defense and play off one another to keep the lead intact.
On Jan. 14, when they fell to the Ducks 87-68, they combined for just 14 assisted baskets. On Thursday they had 23.
In addition, the Wildcats out-hustled Oregon to the tune of a plus-6 rebound advantage. That mark was what left Altman harping on Ware during the timeout. And later on in the second half, it had him a few steps on the court calling out Dante after Kriisa’s 30-foot three put the Wildcats up 88-75 with 1:17 to go came off an offensive rebound.
“I don’t think we played hard enough tonight,” Richardson said. “Like the loose balls, the 50/50 balls, we got out-rebounded by 10, so we just gotta play with more grit next game.”
On Thursday, there would be no bellowing dunks for Dante, or alley-oops turned three-pointers from Couisnard. This time around, it was Kriisa who did the chirping as the Estonian guard poured in 12 second-half points.
“We’re probably a tough scout because you don’t know who’s going to show up and who’s not going to show up,” Altman said on Tuesday at practice.
It’s an issue that has plagued the Ducks all year, and the main reason they sit at 13-10 with eight games remaining. It rang true again in the McKale center where it’s tough to win as is. Conceding 91 points makes a road victory there almost inconceivable.
Now they’ll travel to Tempe desperate for a road split. And if history says anything about this iteration of Ducks basketball, they should catch a cold Arizona State team after the Sun Devils dropped 90 points on them in mid-January.
