Most Ducks will look down the roster of the Australian Institute of Sport — the Oregon men’s basketball team’s first opponent of the exhibition season — tonight and see just a group of names.
But Ian Crosswhite will see friends.
Crosswhite, Oregon’s redshirt freshman forward from Sydney, Australia, played for the AIS team two years ago, just one of many teams that Crosswhite played for before coming to Eugene.
On the eve of his first state-side meeting with his former cohorts — the Ducks and AIS will tip off at 7:30 tonight at McArthur Court — Crosswhite reflected on entering his second season with the Ducks.
“It’s real bush,” Crosswhite said of his hometown of Castlecrag, just outside of Sydney. “It’s close to the city, but we’ve got kookaburras and parakeets and all sorts of wildlife. I actually like (Eugene) a little more; it’s more quiet, and the community here is embracing. People will take care of you and actually care about you.”
Crosswhite’s thick Australian accent is about the only thing that differentiates him from the other athletic big men of the Oregon basketball team at first meeting. But Matt Short, who redshirted last season with Crosswhite, clarified the feeling of having an Aussie next to him on the bench.
“He adds a little more flavor to the team,” Short said. “We’ve got a lot of different personalities on the team, but we all get along so well. It just adds a little more character to our team.”
There may not be much of a basketball tradition Down Under, but what little there is flows through Crosswhite’s veins. His father, Perry, played on the Australian Olympic basketball team in three different Olympics, captaining the squad in Montreal in 1976 and Moscow in 1980. His mother, Janice, also played basketball but was known for being a national hurdles champion while at Melbourne University.
So Crosswhite has played basketball since he could say “hook shot.” His mother would leave him at a day care center that was right next to a basketball court, he said, and the young Crosswhite would dribble the days away.
Still, Crosswhite felt like he needed to play basketball in America, like his sister Anna, who plays for Virginia.
“You get a little bit of pressure on you,” Crosswhite said. “So it was kind of good to get out of Australia, kind of earn things on your own merits.”
On an Oregon team that is faster than a speeding bullet, Crosswhite and his fellow big men are the “X” factor — can they be as strong as a locomotive?
As Crosswhite pointed out, the Ducks’ biggest loss last year, in the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight to Kansas, came in large part to the Jayhawks’ dominance of the boards. Oregon was among the nation’s leaders in points scored last season, but that didn’t matter in its only March Madness loss.
“Coach Kent is really focusing on (rebounding) this season,” Crosswhite said. “Stuff like boxing out. Using our size and our speed to our advantage.”
Crosswhite’s role in the Oregon big man picture will be clarified as the season goes on. For now, the redshirt freshman says he just wants to contribute wherever possible.
“He’s really good, and he’s ready to show everybody else just how good he is,” forward Robert Johnson said. “He’s a great addition to the team.”
Johnson and center Brian Helquist — both roommates with Crosswhite — will share most of the duties down low, with junior center Jay Anderson the most experienced of the big men on the bench. Crosswhite and Short are Kent’s main options from there.
The two redshirts agree that last season’s experience of sitting on the end of the bench was hard.
“When we were down, and you think you can help, it’s real frustrating, you just want to sit there and pull your hair out,” Crosswhite said.
But Crosswhite said it was invaluable experience, teaching him the intricacies of how a Division I basketball team works. Short agreed.
“Compared to where I was at this point last year, it’s a huge improvement,” Short said.
Twenty-seven years ago, Percy Crosswhite and the Australian National Team came to America and played in McArthur Court against the famed “Kamikaze Kids” and a junior named Ernie Kent.
In 1982, Percy Crosswhite birthed a future Kent pupil.
“I didn’t even know my dad played here, originally,” that pupil, Ian Crosswhite, said. “He never mentioned it to me, and I was talking to Coach Kent one day during the recruiting process, and he said, ‘I’m pretty sure I played against your dad when I was playing here.’”
Now a Crosswhite is playing in a game with an Australian team, only his name is Ian, and he’ll be wearing the green and white of Oregon.
Does that mean he’ll have reservations about beating a team from his home country, a team with a uniform that he once wore?
This Crosswhite doesn’t hesitate.
“I want to beat them,” he said. “By a lot.”
Such harsh words about people who are, after all, friends instead of mere names on a preseason roster.
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