The No. 13 Oregon men’s basketball team opens up their season with an exhibition game against St. Martin’s University Friday, 7 p.m. at McArthur Court.
Oregon senior forward Malik Hairston said that this first exhibition game will be all about setting the tone for the new season.
“We definitely want to set the tone for the defensive intensity and just the way we’re going to share the ball this year,” he said.
Oregon coach Ernie Kent said that Joevan Catron will be the fifth starter to go along with the four returning starters from last season. Kent said that Catron’s passion for the game is what won him the starting role.
“I just love his heart and I love his passion,” said Kent. “He’s going to ignite this crowd and he’s going to ignite us with that energy that he brings to the floor and that’s very important.”
Kent said that this team is sure to be able to score, and he is mostly going to be looking at where this team is at on the defensive end of the floor.
“I’m anxious to see where we’re at defensively more than anything else,” Kent said. “We’re so unconventional in our attack at this level that it’s hard to get a feel for where we’re at defensively.”
One of the main reasons for concern is that the Ducks are looking to replace last season’s team leader Aaron Brooks. Though Brooks was known for making several game-winning shots and taking games over offensively last year, Kent said that he will be missed most defensively.
“We miss his leadership at the defensive end of the floor and this is going to be a different kind of basketball team without him that’s going to have to find its character, find its way and find out who they are,” said Kent.
But senior leadership is something that this team should have plenty of with senior starters Hairston, Maarty Leunen and Bryce Taylor stepping into the role.
“Those three seniors are three of our leaders. They’re our best students academically, they’re the hardest workers on the floor,” Kent said. “They’re great, great leaders … so it’s kind of their team right now.”
“I think we’ve got a lot of knowledge that we can share with the younger guys coming in that can better this team,” Hairston said.
While specific goals have been avoided by the players going into the season, they all said that the potential is there to make a run through the Pacific-10 Conference and NCAA Tournament similar to last season.
“We just need to focus on taking it step by step as a team and learning what it’s going to take for us to become the best team possible,” Taylor said. “Hopefully we’ll see those same results we had last year.”
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