It shouldn’t have come down to the final possession, but it did.
A 36-16 halftime lead was long gone, but the Oregon women’s basketball team still had one final opportunity to salvage a victory Saturday at Oregon State.
With eight seconds remaining, Oregon inbounded the ball in the front court and set up an open three-point look for junior forward Amanda Johnson.
“We ran a little fake inside screen and brought Amanda Johnson out off a curl screen,” head coach Paul Westhead said. “She had a nice look.”
Nice looks don’t always translate to made baskets, however. In this case, Johnson’s effort rimmed out. Deanna Weaver grabbed the offensive rebound for Oregon, but also missed, and after Oregon State’s Earlysia Marchbanks secured possession, the final buzzer sounded.
With that, Oregon’s collapse was complete. The Ducks (12-13, 3-11 Pacific-10 Conference) were outscored 45-23 in the second half, and fell 61-59 to Oregon State (9-16, 2-12 Pac-10).
It was Oregon’s seventh loss in a row, and the most difficult to explain. Oregon was without star point guard Nia Jackson for the fourth straight game, but the cellar-dwelling Beavers had a 10-game losing streak of their own earlier this year, and were dead last in the conference in scoring.
But instead of lamenting his team’s defensive failures, Westhead chalked up the loss to the Ducks’ offensive struggles in the second half.
“My quick analysis would be we struggled and at times stopped scoring,” Westhead said.” Not scoring baskets, you’re at risk that some bad things could happen at the other end and the gap shortens.”
Indeed, the Ducks didn’t score a point for the first 6:47 of the second half, by which point Oregon State had shaved 13 points off the Ducks’ halftime lead. Victoria Kenyon finally ended Oregon State’s run with two free throws that gave Oregon a 38-29 lead, but the Beavers methodically erased the remainder of the deficit over the next eight minutes of game action.
The Beavers held their first lead with 5:30 remaining when Marchbanks scored a driving layup. The teams then battled back and forth, trading baskets until hit Alexis Bostick made two free throws with 57 seconds left to give Oregon State the lead for good.
But before halftime, Oregon was in total control. The Ducks used a 24-0 run to go ahead by double digits, while holding Oregon State to 21 percent shooting.
“We were as far off our game as we could have been,” Oregon State coach Scott Rueck said.
But Rueck also realized that because of its fast-paced offense, Oregon is susceptible to blowing big leads. In fact, just a few weeks ago, the Ducks blew an 18-point lead in an overtime loss to Washington.
“You look at history and we knew Oregon had been up 18 at Washington and Washington came back,” Rueck said. “We’re down 20, but if we play good basketball this half, (Oregon), because they shoot quickly, might give us an opportunity to get back in it.”
As it turned out, that’s exactly what happened. The Beavers made 52 percent of their second half field goals and held the Ducks to 24 percent shooting.
“We hit some shots,” Marchbanks said. “We had some wide open shots in the first half that we just weren’t hitting.”
The Beavers also made it a priority to get El Sara Greer more involved. The athletic 6-foot-2 senior post player put forth a dominant 21-point, 13-rebound performance that played a key role in her team’s comeback.
“El dominated inside so we just kept feeding her and feeding her and it kept paying off,” Marchbanks said.
Marchbanks wasn’t too shabby herself, scoring 15 of her 17 points in the second half.
Johnson and Tatianna Thomas led Oregon with 18 and 11 points, respectively, in the losing effort.
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