The Pacific-10 Conference schedule hasn’t been nice to the Oregon Ducks, and it won’t get any easier this weekend when the UCLA Bruins and the USC Trojans make their final appearances at McArthur Court.
Oregon (10-9 overall, 2-5 Pac-10 Conference) looks at this weekend as a way to turnaround an ugly five-game slide. These games mark the halfway point of the Pac-10 season, and if the Ducks hope to have any chance of climbing into the top half of the league, these wins are critical to their success.
“I’ll say it again,” head coach Ernie Kent said. “At the end of the day the team that has the most belief, the team that’s going to out-work the other team is going to usually be the team that wins games and wins this conference when it’s all said and done.”
It’s been the winning part that has eluded Kent and his team of late. Last week, the Ducks dropped two games against California and Stanford by a combined 47 points while shooting abysmally from the field. Oregon shot 38.1 percent from the field against the Golden Bears to go along with a 1-of-18 performance from three-pointer distance.
“The biggest thing with us right now is believing in ourselves and the ability to shoot the basketball a little bit better, and hopefully we’ll be able to do that,” Kent said.
As for the Bruins, who the Ducks play tonight at 7:30 p.m., they aren’t the UCLA of old that has dominated the conference. The team is sitting at 9-10 overall and 4-3 in conference. Coach Ben Howland’s team is still dangerous, however, with five players averaging more than 10 points a game. The problem with them is the bench has been an almost non-factor to this point in the season.
“Obviously the personnel that have been to three straight final fours are not all there, but yet they’ve figured some things out,” Kent said of the Bruins’ new mix of players.
Two years ago the Bruins were not only the class of the conference, but also of the country, with players like Kevin Love, Darren Collison and Josh Shipp running around Pauley Pavilion. Now, UCLA will need to win the rest of its games and perhaps win the conference tournament just to qualify for the NCAA tournament in March.
“They started out struggling like a lot of teams in this conference,” Kent said. “They’re not different than the rest of us; this conference is an up-and-down conference, everybody deals with consistency.”
None more so than the Ducks. In their last five games, the Ducks have lost by fewer than 10 points just once (to OSU by seven) and haven’t scored above 70 points. Prior to the Beavers game on Jan. 10, Oregon had scored above 70 points in all but three of its games and had scored over 90 against both Washington State and Washington.
But one win will would go a long way in righting the listless ship that is the Oregon offense, Porter said.
“It’d be pretty good,” Porter said. “The conference is down, so it probably wouldn’t mean as much, but beating UCLA is beating UCLA so we’ll take the win.”
Honorary captains
For tonight’s game, Larry Holiday will represent Oregon as an honorary captain and Bill Walton will be UCLA’s representative. Holiday played for the UO from 1969-1971 and was a part of the Feb. 21, 1970 upset of then-No. 1 UCLA.
Walton was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1993 and was a part of UCLA’s record 88-game winning streak and two national championships. He won three straight Naismith College Player of the Year awards and went on to play for the Portland Trail Blazers, the Los Angeles Clippers and the Boston Celtics. Walton won two NBA championships — one with the Blazers in 1977 and one with the Celtics
in 1986.
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