Oregon, after its first win in 54 days, didn’t celebrate much when the game finished Saturday. The team hugged and smiled, but there wasn’t any demonstrative shows of emotion like the ones from the students who rushed the court.
Oregon head coach Ernie Kent has praised his team’s ability to stay centered and focused this season, which he said allowed them to win against Stanford after such a long losing streak.
The business-as-usual attitude continued into this week’s Pacific-10 Conference coaches teleconference, where Ernie Kent’s time on the phone was barely any longer than last week, when zero questions were asked his way.
One of them was the thing most Duck fans are wondering now: Where do they go from here?
“Obviously the guys are excited, and the focus from this point is to win another game,” Kent said. “The big picture is to win as many of them as we can.”
Oregon came out of the Stanford game much healthier than it did the week before, and will have had eight days of rest before playing Oregon State on March 1 at 7 p.m.
Oregon State offers a style of play that loves to slow the pace of the game down and trap its opponents on defense. Kent said many teams, like Washington State, have gone to such a style because they’re finding a lot of success against up-and-down teams.
“I think that teams are winning more by keeping the games close and the score down and possessions down and having success,” Kent said.
Beavs well ahead of coach’s pace
Sweeping the Bay Area schools on the season? The last time the Beavers did that, the 1989-90 season, some of OSU head coach Craig Robinson’s players weren’t even born yet.
The Ducks’ home winning streak against the Beavers is only slightly shorter, standing at 15 years.
That the Beavers swept the rug out from under both Stanford and California this year, along with the rest of its Pac-10 success so far, has been a surprise to Robinson.
“I had no idea. I think I’ve said out loud, when I first took the job, people said don’t worry about winning any games this year except for the Civil War game,” Robinson said. “I thought if we win two or three, that would be considered a very successful season based on what this team did last year.”
The positive attention Oregon State basketball is receiving lately has been another plus for Robinson: He’s gradually becoming known as the OSU coach, rather than a relative or brother-in-law to that couple in the White House.
“I just knew eventually that would happen,” Robinson said on the conference. “One of two things would happen: We’d get better or people would get tired of talking about my relatives.”
It seems all anybody wants to talk about is his team.
What about Stanford?
A week after losing to the worst team in the Pac-10, the ninth-place team’s head coach raved about the league’s parity.
“I think there’s a lot of parity across the country in college basketball and in our conference you can tell by looking at the top of the Pac that there are a lot of teams,” Stanford head coach Johnny Dawkins said. “This conference is very competitive top to bottom.”
After losing to the last-place Ducks on Saturday, the Cardinal meet their next foe in UCLA, which is an example of the parity after beating Washington last Thursday to get into first place, only to lose to Washington State on Saturday and slide into a tie for second.
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Ducks hope to maintain focus, double Pac-10 win total Sunday
Daily Emerald
February 24, 2009
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