Men’s basketball

The Oregon men’s basketball team lost a key tall guy and a key short guy in the off-season.
For head coach Ernie Kent and the Ducks, the 2002-03 answers lie somewhere in the middle.
Oregon returns three starters from last season’s Pacific-10 Conference Championship squad, and all three will play a large part in the success or failure of this year’s team. Forwards Luke Jackson and Robert Johnson, along with star point guard Luke Ridnour, will guide a supporting cast that includes many new faces.
“Each year we put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves to be successful — even more pressure than this community,” Kent said. “We expect this team to be among the top teams in the country. That’s why we’ve built it and put it together as a program, and that continuity, hopefully, will continue.”
To replace starting guard Freddie Jones — now with the NBA’s Indiana Pacers — and big man Chris Christoffersen, Kent will rely on some battle-tested talent and some new bodies. Center Brian Helquist played in all but five games last season and averaged 3.5 points per game. To replace Jones, Kent will rely on guard James Davis, who played in every game last year, and junior-college transfer Andre Joseph, who was a standout at Lee (Texas) Junior College last season.
“We will miss Chris’ size, but we have capable players in the program — between Brian Helquist, Ian Crosswhite and Matt Short — that will provide more scoring punch than Chris did, and hopefully better rebounding,” Kent said. “What we hope to do with Freddie is, on a consistent basis throughout the course of the year, balance that position out as best as we can. We won’t have the spectacular player that Freddie provided, but we feel like we have enough firepower that we can take care of the scoring at the position.”
Another new face that could challenge for a guard position is Kent’s own son, Jordan. A top basketball and track and field recruit last year, Jordan will play for his dad for the first time this fall.
But Kent hasn’t seen his team workout yet, making it hard for him to predict how this year’s team will come together.
“It’s hard to give you, ‘This is what we expect, to repeat’ or anything,” Kent said. “Until I can get them in here for individual workouts and find out who’s gotten bigger and stronger, it’s hard for me to comment on, since I haven’t seen them yet.”
About the only thing Kent does know about his team is its schedule. Oregon opens the season Nov. 30 with a weak opponent, Pacific. But it only gets harder from there for the Ducks, who host Portland — a team that beat Oregon last season in the Rose City — then play Kansas in the Papé Jam in Portland, play at Pepperdine and finish off the tough stretch at North Carolina State.
“Even prior to that stretch, there are things this team needs to do to show that it’s well on its way to having a good year,” Kent said of his team’s gauntlet-style December schedule. “That stretch is just a stretch of games that will strengthen us for the Pac-10 Conference, because those games will require you to go to a different level, and a coaches’ dream is to stay at that level.”
As far as the Pac-10 schedule is concerned, Oregon will again face the Arizona schools to start the season in early January, then play road games at the Bay Area schools before a non-conference game at Portland State. The Ducks will end the regular-season at Arizona before the second annual Pac-10 Tournament in mid-march.
So how do the Ducks repeat a season that included a trip to the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight and a Pac-10 Championship? Kent hopes that repeating last summer’s workout schedule might help.
Ridnour and Jackson were counselors at the prestigious Nike basketball camp this summer, while several Ducks participated in other camps. Kent worked on his coaching with the U.S. Junior National team, which participated in the FIBA Junior World Championships qualifying tournament.
Last summer, the Ducks participated in similar summer camps and Kent also coached in the USA basketball system. Later in the season, all the Ducks cited their summer experience as helping them for the regular season.
“From what I can tell, all our guys had a productive summer,” Kent said.
The coach and the Ducks can only hope it leads to another productive year.