With the aid of its faithful roaring crowd, the Oregon men’s basketball team revitalized its season in a convincing upset victory against a top-10 team.
The magic of McArthur Court played a key role in sending No. 7 Arizona out of town a loser for the second straight year. This time, though, it wasn’t an improbable comeback victory for the Ducks, as last season’s was.
Instead, Oregon played solid defense, demonstrated good ball movement and shut down Arizona’s transition game in a 79-67 victory in front of a sellout crowd of 9,087.
“This becomes another one of those special games at Mac Court,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said. “I really want to compliment the fans. They certainly gave us a nice comfort zone and helped us maintain the lead throughout the game.”
The Ducks (12-6 overall, 3-5 Pacific-10 Conference) needed one of these types of games to help get them out of the funk that had sent them to five defeats in their previous six games.
Oregon forward Bryan Bracey, who scored a game-high 23 points and grabbed a team-high eight rebounds, said that the win was the first key step toward turning this ship around.
“We said today that we were starting our season over,” Bracey said. “We were 0-0. And it starts with a win tonight. We’re looking forward to beating everyone else, and that’s our goal. We know we’re a good team.”
The Ducks did everything they had to do to pull off the upset, and that included playing a full 40 minutes of basketball. Arizona took an early 8-5 lead, but then Oregon went on a 12-2 run to take a lead it would never relinquish.
“The key to this game was that we had a great first half,” Bracey said.
Oregon expanded on its 32-25 halftime advantage and upped its lead to 56-40 on a Bracey jumper with 10:17 on the clock. Arizona wouldn’t quit and had the Oregon lead trimmed to only nine points with just more than four minutes to play.
Then came the nail in the coffin.
Oregon point guard Luke Ridnour drove through the lane, drew a foul on Ariazona center Loren Woods and spun in a bank shot that sent The Pit into a frenzy. The three-point play at the 4:10 mark proved to be the back-breaker, as the game soon turned into an Oregon free-throw exhibition.
“Ridnour will be one of the premier guards in the conference; there’s no question about that,” Arizona head coach Lute Olson said. “He’s smart, he’s competitive, he shoots the ball well.”
Ridnour’s 17 points were indeed important, but so was the early play of Oregon center Chris Christoffersen. Christoffersen continued his improvement with a solid all-around offensive and defensive game.
“It was an unbelievable crowd tonight and helped get my confidence going,” said Christoffersen, who had five points and three blocks with his parents from Denmark in attendance.
The Oregon defense held Arizona, which came into the game averaging 83 points per contest, to a season-low 67. The Wildcats shot just 35 percent from the field, as the Ducks beat Arizona in consecutive games for the first time in 17 years.
“We got beat every way we could get beat,” Olson said.
But perhaps the most shocking thing about the game wasn’t even the win itself, but rather Oregon’s reaction following it. The Ducks didn’t act like a lower-tier Pac-10 team that had knocked off one of the nation’s best. They presented themselves as league contenders who had just woken up from their slumber.
“Our philosophy has always been don’t get too up and don’t get too down,” Kent said. “The season is a grind and we have to push through it. There are so many life lessons that are learned in athletics, and we learned a huge one.”
Oregon takes on Arizona State at 1 p.m. Sunday at Mac Court.