Oregon and California left it all out on the floor in the Golden Bears’ physical 72-62 win over the Ducks.
Someone left out a little bit more.
In the midst of a first-half scrum for the ball under the Ducks’ basket, Oregon guard Nia Jackson came up bloody. Jackson — whose attacking mentality brought her a team-high four offensive rebounds — changed shorts and slipped on a nameless No. 15 jersey, in place of her stained No. 32.
“It wasn’t mine,” Jackson said referring to the blood. “It was somebody in the game. I don’t know.”
The Ducks (12-6, 3-3 Pacific-10 Conference) tangled with the Golden Bears (9-8, 3-3) in perhaps the most physical game Oregon has played all season. A willingness to fight for and dive for the ball helped overcome poor shooting early — the Ducks shot 34.2 percent from the field in the first half — and other fundamental miscues to keep the two teams close.
The Golden Bears began to pull away in the second half, leading by as many as 20 points, while Oregon continued to struggle. Cal kept the pressure up through a too-little-too-late run by the Ducks to hold them 25 points below their season scoring average.
“I thought we showed a lot of growth in this game,” Cal head coach Joanne Boyle said of her team, which had four freshmen among its five starters. “I thought they did a great job executing the game plan, obviously to our benefit. I thought it was going to be more of a defensive game; I thought they did a great job keeping them in the sixties.”
“The clock was on our side. We had like a 10-point lead with four minutes left,” Cal guard Eliza Pierre said. “We just wanted to slow them down and get shots.”
Oregon shot 41.2 percent (7-17) from the three-point line, but the Golden Bears succeeded in locking down the perimeter. Taylor Lilley and Micaela Cocks combined to make 10 of 26 baskets on the night, and the interior was mostly inaccessible outside of early layups.
Ducks forward Nicole Canepa and forward Amanda Johnson made a combined six of 19 heavily contested shots.
“We could let them do anything else, but don’t let them get a shot,” Pierre said.
When the Ducks did miss shots, second chances were hard to come by. Cal dominated the glass, 53 to 31, including 24 offensive rebounds. Freshman center Talia Caldwell led all players with 13 rebounds, nine of them offensive.
“Way too many offensive rebounds,” Oregon head coach Paul Westhead said. “We’re not doing a good job keeping people away from second shots.”
The Ducks will doubtlessly focus on the glass during Saturday’s contest against No. 2 Stanford, and it’s a good thing — the Cardinal enter the weekend ranked third in the nation, and first in the Pac-10, in rebounding margin (13.3 per game). 
Croshaw honored before the game
Former Duck guard Missy Croshaw, whose Oregon career three-pointers record was broken this season by Lilley, was recognized as the honorary captain for the Cal game.
Croshaw played from 1991 to 1994 and led the Ducks to the second round of the NCAA tournament in her senior year. Though her 189 three-pointers made now ranks second all-time, Croshaw also holds the third-best career assists mark (417) and fifth-best three-point field goal percentage mark (39.8 percent) in Oregon history.
Lilley and Croshaw hugged at center court before the game, and Westhead presented Lilley with a commemorative basketball in honor of her career three-pointers mark.
Lilley made four three-pointers against the Golden Bears to increase her all-time number to 208.
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