So much for any easy victories in this conference.
No. 13 Oregon returned home for the first time in two weeks to face an Arizona State team that sat last in the conference without a single Pacific-10 Conference victory, but the Ducks had to squeak out a 55-51 victory in front of 8,868 at McArthur Court.
It’s the lowest point total of the season for Oregon as the Ducks struggled to find their rhythm against the Sun Devils’ zone, shooting just 28.6 percent in the second half and 39.5 percent for the game.
“The Pac-10, all 10 teams are great,” Oregon’s Aaron Brooks said. “I don’t know how they don’t have a victory. They’ve been playing everybody real tough.”
But was that a little too close for comfort for the Ducks?
“They’re tough to play against with their style of play,” Oregon coach Ernie Kent said. “Yeah, it’d be great to blow someone out, but at the same time … I don’t see anybody on our schedule that you can say we’re going to blow that team out. So buckle up…let’s just grind through it.”
Oregon shot 50 percent in the first half primarily because of the hot hand of freshman point guard Tajuan Porter, who scored 17 of Oregon’s 33 first-half points and finished with 24 for the game, his highest point total since scoring 38 against Portland State in the third game of the season.
He picked up the slack for Oregon’s other key scorers. Aaron Brooks, the Ducks’ leading pointman entering the game at 18.7 points per game, finished with just five points, which snapped his 14-game streak of double digit games. Porter was the only Duck in double digits Thursday.
“I told Tajuan this is his game, I’m going to take this one off,” Brooks said jokingly. “Tajuan stepped up and played big today. If I’m off, it doesn’t really matter.”
Porter carried the Ducks with 14 points in the first 6:19 of the game, his last three in that stretch, which put Oregon in front 16-12, caused the 5-foot-6 freshman to look closely at his fingers and smile.
“I haven’t been hot like that since like the first three games so I was impressed,” said Porter, who finished 8-of-12 shooting from the floor and 6-of-9 from three-point range. “I still got confidence but I wasn’t expecting to shoot like that tonight.”
The Sun Devils, who now have five losses in Pac-10 play by five points or fewer, fell victim to their own shooting woes but still managed to keep the game within reach much in part to guard Derek Glasser’s 17 second-half points and a dominant effort on the boards by sophomore forward Jeff Pendergraph, the Pac-10’s leading offensive rebounder who grabbed seven on the night and 19 total rebounds, matching his season high.
The Sun Devils shot 31 percent on 9-of-29 shooting in the first half and only upped that slightly in the second half by shooting 32.3 percent and 31.7 percent for the game.
That’s the lowest field goal percentage allowed by Oregon in the Pac-10 this season, and Arizona State’s 51 points is also a season low allowed by Oregon in conference play.
Arizona State hit a 5:58 dry spell after six straight misses and four turnovers to end the first half that saw the Sun Devils go from a 21-21 tie to a 33-21 deficit going into the break.
“That was a significant run the game,” Arizona State coach Herb Sendek said. “From our perspective, we played 34 pretty good minutes of basketball.”
Yet a three from Glasser, who finished with 17 points, tied the game at 42 with 9:30 to play in the second half after Oregon committed seven turnovers in the first 10:25 of the half.
“The way they play, they’ve been able to keep the game close” said Oregon’s Malik Hairston, who became the 26th Oregon player and second this season, after Brooks, to reach 1,000 career points. “That’s definitely not the start we wanted in the second half but we were able to manage the game and get the (win).”
Oregon broke the tie with Hairston’s tip-in and Maarty Leunen’s three pushed Oregon out to a 50-44 lead with 4:56 to play as the Ducks never trailed again though Arizona State managed to cut it to three with nine seconds to play after back-to-back three pointers from Glasser.
The win is Oregon’s 10th by eight points or fewer and, more importantly, number 20 on the season.
“That benchmark win is number 20,” Kent said. “I don’t care if it’s an ugly win…that’s 20 wins and I think there’s probably only a dozen teams in the country right now that have 20 wins. That’s a huge milestone for us.”
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