LOS ANGELES — So the topsy-turvy 18-game regular season has come and gone, and the No. 9 Ducks have emerged on top as conference champions.
The Oregon men’s basketball team is assured of an NCAA Tournament berth, and it would seem that the Ducks wouldn’t have the same motivation for this weekend’s league tournament as, say, Washington.
After a 12-year hiatus, the Pacific-10 Conference Tournament returns in a three-day, eight-team format at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. The action begins at 1 p.m. today with top-seeded Oregon facing off with eighth-seeded Washington on Fox Sports Net.
But don’t try to suggest to Ernie Kent that his Ducks (22-7 overall, 14-4 Pac-10) will have any less desire to win the tournament title just because they’re already assured of a spot in the Big Dance.
“I think when you put all those teams together in one place and those kids are with their peers on the same floor, they’re going to want to play, and they’re going to want to win that thing,” Kent said. “I don’t think anybody will be motivated any less because they’re already in the NCAA Tournament.”
Surely, though, there will be a fired-up and confident Huskies team that will enter today’s game with the Ducks. Washington (11-17, 5-13) held off Oregon State for the tournament’s eighth and final spot but hasn’t had much success with the other seven teams involved — except Oregon.
Washington is 1-8 this season against ranked opponents with that lone victory coming on Jan. 24 at home when the Huskies upended the then-No. 19 Ducks, 97-92. In the win, Pac-10 Newcomer of the Year Doug Wrenn scored a career-high 32 points to lift his team to an inspiring victory that may have saved head coach Bob Bender’s job.
A month later, Wrenn scored 27 as Washington made the Ducks earn a hard-fought 90-84 victory that capped off Oregon’s 16-0 home record. After the game, while the Ducks were celebrating a perfect season at McArthur Court, the Huskies were proclaiming it a moral victory and looking forward to a potential rematch with the Ducks at the Pac-10 Tournament.
“We match up well with them,” Washington guard Curtis Allen told reporters afterwards. “We’re just as athletic as them. If we can get them in L.A. that would be great.”
Allen and the Huskies have gotten their wish. For them, this is the only postseason they’ll see unless they shock everybody and win three games in three days to become the tournament champion.
“They played us tough both games,” Oregon sophomore James Davis said. “We know they have a lot of confidence and have no fears. That’s a scary thing. They have nothing to lose, but I think if we keep playing the way we’ve been playing, we’ll come out on top.”
Since losing two overtime heartbreakers in the Bay Area, the Ducks have won five straight, including sweeping the Los Angeles schools last weekend en route to becoming the outright Pac-10 champs — Oregon’s first since 1939.
Oregon came back home after last Saturday’s win at UCLA and then flew back down to Los Angeles on Tuesday evening. Should the Ducks make it to Saturday’s Pac-10 Tournament title game (3 p.m., CBS), they would have played three extra games that could possibly wear the team out before the following week’s NCAA Tournament.
“Because of our depth, I don’t worry about fatigue,” Kent said.
That depth, though, will be one short this week, with back-up center Brian Helquist sitting out the league tournament with a strained right knee suffered in Oregon’s win at USC. His status for the NCAA Tournament is day-to-day.
“Jay (Anderson) and Mark (Michaelis) did an excellent job in the UCLA game with Brian out, and the production they’re going to give us this weekend is extremely important,” Kent said. “And Chris (Christoffersen) has to stay out of foul trouble for hopefully the entire game.”
If the Ducks do get past the pesky Huskies, they’d play at 6 p.m. Friday against the winner of today’s USC-Stanford game.
In a Pac-10 season where the top six teams all finished just three games apart — and with all six most likely heading to the Big Dance — this week’s tournament promises to be exciting, and one that should gain plenty of national attention.
“What the season has created is incredible interest in the conference tournament,” Bender said.
“I think the Pac-10 has gotten a lot of notoriety with how competitive it is,” Kent said. “It may
become one of the most competitive conference tournaments in the country.”
Perhaps Oregon’s Davis said it best when trying to predict what will take place over the next three days when talented, even-matched teams go head-to-head.
“I mean, dang, the Pac-10’s
so tough,” Davis said. “You don’t know. ‘SC might do it. Stanford, Arizona, all those are veteran teams.
“It’s going to be a crazy tournament.”