With just three games remaining in the regular season, the Oregon men’s basketball team can still cling to an outside shot of making the NCAA Tournament. They’ll have to win all three, though, and it starts this weekend with a Civil War rematch in Corvallis.
Oregon State (15-12, 5-10) comes in having lost four-straight games, but that doesn’t offset the challenge facing the Ducks as they head into the weekend. The Beavers shocked Oregon (19-8, 10-5) in a 76-71 victory at Matthew Knight Arena back in January, largely on the strength of a rare 1-3-1 defensive scheme that helped force the Ducks into 23 crippling turnovers. @@http://www.osubeavers.com/sports/m-baskbl/stats/2011-2012/teamcume.html@@  @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
Those giveaways, more than anything else, were what lost the game for Oregon, and the players know that they’ll have to alter their offensive attack to better combat Oregon State’s defense.
“Just attack the 1-3-1 is the biggest thing,” junior forward E.J. Singler said. “The throwing back and forth — that’s what hurts you. You gotta attack it, and I think if we do that, it’s just gonna put us in better positions.”
The Beavers do not rely exclusively on the 1-3-1 defense, though, and that’s part of what makes them so tricky. To hear Oregon head coach Dana Altman tell it, the Ducks struggled against virtually everything Oregon State threw their way in the first matchup.
“We did turn it over against the 1-3-1,” Altman said. “But we turned it over against their 2-3, we turned it over against their man-to-man, we turned it over against everything.”
Altman expects more of the same mixing and matching on Sunday, though Singler, for his part, anticipates that the Beavers will at least start the game in 1-3-1.
“It worked well against us the first time,” Singler said. “I think they’ll start out doing it, and if we kind of break it down, I think they’ll go out of it, but I definitely think they’ll use it at the start.”
What makes this particular defensive strategy so tricky is not so much its fundamentals — which dictate one defender being placed at the top of the key, followed by a line of three defenders and one man guarding the post — but rather the sheer novelty of its use. Oregon State’s Craig Robinson is among the few college coaches to deploy it on a regular basis, and many opposing teams find themselves unprepared for its rigors.
“It’s just a different look,” senior guard Garrett Sim said.”And I think that’s why people struggle with it.”
Taking care of the ball on offense will also have repercussions at the defensive end of the floor for Oregon. Oregon State guard Jared Cunningham exploded for 24 of his 27 points in the second half of the first Civil War matchup, and many of those points came in transition off of Oregon turnovers. In all, the Ducks gave up 31 points off turnovers, more than enough to make the difference in a five-point loss. @@http://www.goducks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?&DB_OEM_ID=500&ATCLID=205335431@@
“That was pretty much the reason we lost that game — turnovers, and then them converting on the turnovers,” Sim said. “That’s where (Cunningham) got a lot of his points — steals, open layups or them getting steals and passing ahead to him. He’s very dangerous and athletic on transitions, so not turning the ball over will stop that.”
They’ll have to do it on the road this time and with the stakes considerably higher. It’s no secret that Oregon’s room for error is small at this point, and the Ducks will have to fight to even maintain the top-four Pac-12 position that guarantees a bye in the first round of the conference tournament.
“We’ve been constantly talking about it,” Singler said. “We know we’ve gotta win these last three games to be at the top of the Pac-12.”