Oregon had the Huskies right where it wanted them.
Down 80-78 at Saturday’s Oregon-Washington Dual, a win in the final event — the 4×400-meter relay — would mean victory for the Ducks. The 4×400 is arguably the Ducks’ strongest track event. On paper, they held a four-second advantage over their opponent.
It seemed as though Oregon had the better deck and was about to win the pot.
But in the final moments, Washington played its trump card.
Ja’Warren Hooker anchored the Huskies’ 4×400 relay team, streaking across the finish line in a time of 3 minutes, 11.21 seconds and winning the meet 85-78 in front of 2,083 fans.
“We weren’t really sure what the points were until they announced it, and then at first I wasn’t going to run. Our guys ran good and gave me the stick with a big lead, so I didn’t have to run hard.
“The guys ran good today, ran really good, so I give all the praise to them. They helped me through this one, it wasn’t me.”
After the meet, Oregon head coach Martin Smith said it was one the Ducks wanted to win. He said he hadn’t made any predictions about the dual’s outcome before the meet.
Saturday morning’s edition of The Register-Guard broke down the meet event-by-event, ultimately picking the Ducks to lose, 96-67.
“We surprised a few people today, didn’t we?” Smith said. “I thought the kids did a tremendous job.”
Smith placed several of his top athletes in multiple events to keep within striking distance. Howard Moore competed in four events including the final relay, despite limping noticeably on an injured heal.
Even Steve Fein competed, finishing a close second in the 1,500 meters with a time of 3:49.57. The race was Fein’s first competition since the Oregon Preview last month.
“I’m very pleased that we made it a competitive competition,” Smith said. “My hope would be that the athletes gain confidence from this, grow from this, and continue to work hard and continue to make improvements and develop as I think we did again this week.
“In the end, we fell short. You can’t blame the mile relay. We had to do other placements in order to position ourselves to do a better job from a team perspective, and that left us a little short in the end.”
Oregon achieved its goal of keeping things close by performing well in the field events. The trio of Colin McArthur, Nat Johnson and Fuluso Akinradewo fulfilled that goal, claiming the first three finishes in the long jump and triple jump.
McArthur set a lifetime best of 24 feet, 1/4 inches to win the long jump, and he placed third in the triple jump.
“I knew I was ready to jump that far,” McArthur said. “It was a little frustrating because we had a headwind most of the day, but I got a little bit lucky on that jump because the wind died and I had some dead air.”
The Ducks also received huge lifts on the track from Santiago Lorenzo and Ross Krempley, who recorded the most thrilling victories of the meet. Lorenzo won the 400 hurdles in a photo-finish time of 52.82 seconds, just .01 seconds ahead of Washington’s Ben Meyer. Krempley took the 800 in similar fashion with a time of 1:56.08, winning by a .05-second margin.