Is it too early to send in nominations for national player of the year?
Luke Ridnour played nearly flawlessly — 31 points on 11-of-15 shooting, 10 assists, three steals, one turnover in 29 minutes — as the Oregon men’s basketball team closed out its exhibition season Thursday night with a 132-98 win over the EA Sports All-Stars at McArthur Court.
Even though the season hasn’t even officially started, the Luke-to-Luke show is in full throttle. Ridnour hit junior forward Luke Jackson with a half-court alley-oop pass early in the game, bringing the crowd of 8,412 to its feet.
Jackson, who finished with 25 points and eight rebounds, was again on the receiving end of a Ridnour alley-oop pass early in the second half, which put the Ducks ahead 83-61.
The Ridnour flurry didn’t stop there. On a 2-on-1 fast break a couple minutes later, the junior point guard fed James Davis with a seemingly effortless between-the-legs pass for an easy lay-in.
Then, with about seven minutes remaining and the Ducks leading 107-81, Ridnour tipped a loose ball over two defenders, drove the length of the court and challenged Joe Vogel, a 6-foot-10 former Colorado State center, in the lane. Ridnour sank a lefty lay-in and was knocked to the ground, sending the crowd to its feet with chants of “Luke, Luke, Luke.” He converted the three-point play from the free-throw line.
“When Luke’s running the show like that … he makes the game real easy,” Davis said.
After putting up 135 points against an admittedly weak Australian traveling team in their first exhibition, the Ducks nearly matched that again against a group of well-traveled former college players. Oregon, ranked No. 11 in the preseason Associated Press poll, took 83 shots Thursday and connected on 48 of them — a 57.8 percent clip.
“I don’t think there’s a lot more I can ask for in an exhibition game. I couldn’t be happier,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said. “That was another very impressive game offensively. We challenged ourselves to run for 40 minutes, and we did.”
The EA Sports team is six days away from completing a grueling 15-game, 20-day schedule, which has it competing against some of the top teams in the nation, including No. 1 Arizona and No. 4 Texas.
By comparison, Arizona defeated the EA Sports squad 117-95 on Tuesday, while Texas handed the travelers a 102-88 loss.
Six EA Sports players scored in double figures against the Ducks, led by former Wyoming guard Brett McFall’s 18 points on 5-of-10 three-pointers.
Oregon was 13-for-31 from beyond the arc, with Ridnour and Davis each hitting 4-of-7 attempts. Seven Ducks scored in double figures.
“We wanted to get out and run, and that’s what we did for the whole game,” Ridnour said. “We have so many weapons, it’s going to be hard to stop us.”
Early on, the Ducks weren’t all that hard to stop. The EA Sports team took a 31-20 lead with 8:45 to play in the first half, but Davis hit two three-pointers to lead the Ducks on a 23-9 run. After former Kansas forward Nick Bradford was called for a technical foul, Jackson and Ian Crosswhite sank four consecutive free-throws.
Bradford and a referee later told Kent that they were impressed by the Ducks’ play.
“One of the officials said they would need to bring in two sets of officials to the games” because the Ducks run so much, Kent said. “Bradford said he’d never seen a team like this that is so skilled and plays so unselfishly.
“That was music to my ears.”