When the Beavers and Ducks men’s basketball teams meet Saturday, 4:30 p.m., at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis, it will be the first of two meetings this season between teams that appear to be going in opposite directions.
Oregon has a decorated recent history, with Pacific-10 Conference Tournament titles, Elite-8 appearances and first-round NBA draft picks, but have been in a winless downward spiral since conference play began this season.
Oregon State owns a recent history of frustration and futility, serving as a conference doormat in recent seasons. The Beavers have been the ones trying desperately to find conference wins, not the Ducks.
But on the heels of a road sweep of the Bay Area schools and with a win Saturday, the Beavers would post a 4-5 record through the first-round of conference play.
A remarkable turnaround, indeed, which provides more reason for Oregon to feel pressured to get that first conference win.
Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said that no matter the outside pressure to get that first conference win, he doesn’t want his players to feel any extra sense of urgency Saturday. He is looking for improvement and steady play.
“Desperation means a sense of panic and throwing stuff out the window and not knowing what you’re doing. We’re not there and we don’t need to get there,” Kent said. “I just look at getting them better and we need to improve in some areas.
“We need to make sure we’re ready to play and make sure we’re poised in that environment over there and that’s all we talk about,” he said.
The Ducks will have to overcome some seemingly glaring mismatches Saturday to get the win, including Oregon’s 5-foot-6 junior guard Tajuan Porter against OSU’s 6-foot-2 sophomore guard Calvin Haynes. Porter ranks No. 14 in the conference in scoring at 13.9 points per game, Haynes is slightly better at 16.2 per contest.
“They’ve got big guards on the top to try and smother the small guards at the point but if you can get past their big guards and make the right play then we’ve got numbers on the baseline,” Porter said.
On the inside, a key to the game will be matching up with Oregon State 6-foot-11 junior center Roeland Schaftenaar, last week’s Pac-10 Player of the Week for averaging 20.0 points and five assists in the Beavers’ first road sweep of Cal and Stanford in more than 15 years.
Schaftenaar presents a unique matchup problem in that he can post up smaller opponents but has the outside game and floor vision to pull bigger defenders out of the key and
remain effective.
“I see a big man who has progressed nicely in his career and is playing with a lot of confidence,” Kent said of Schaftenaar. “He is playing very well right now and he’s obviously going to be someone that we’re going to have to
contend with.”
The game will be televised on Fox Sports Northwest with radio on KUGN (590 AM). Live audio and statistics are available on the O-zone at Goducks.com.
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