The Oregon men played four minutes of solid basketball Thursday night.
Good enough.
The Ducks trailed by seven points with 4:36 left in the game, but stormed back to beat the Golden Bears of California, 76-72, in front of 8,504 fans at McArthur Court. Oregon (11-4 overall, 4-1 Pacific-10 Conference) won its ninth-straight home game, while California (10-3, 1-2) dropped its third-straight road contest.
“The biggest thing is that we were able to pull out one of these close games,” said Oregon head coach Ernie Kent, whose Ducks have lost four tight games on the road this season. “It allowed us to step up and grow as a program.”
Oregon was able to come back on Cal with a run of good shooting and better defense at the end of the contest. With four and a half minutes left in the game, California center Amit Tamir hit a long three-pointer to put Cal ahead 65-58. But on the next possession, Oregon guard Freddie Jones collected a rebound on an Anthony Lever miss, put it back and drew the foul to pull the Ducks within four. On Cal’s next possession, Golden Bear guard Shantay Legans dribbled the ball off his knee, giving the ball back to the Ducks.
“We made some mistakes that helped to narrow the gap,” California head coach Ben Braun said after the game. “We had a couple of turnovers and other things all in the same stretch that really hurt us.”
With less than four minutes left, Oregon guard Luke Ridnour — who had been cold all game — drilled a three-pointer to make the score 65-64 California. Two free throws by Luke Jackson on the Ducks’ next possession gave Oregon its first lead since the 3:31 mark of the first half. It was a lead the Ducks would not relinquish.
“Ridnour hit a real clutch three down the stretch,” Jones said. “That motivated us, and told us it was time to take over the game.”
The Ducks made eight free throws over the game’s final minute to seal the win.
Oregon players made it to the charity stripe 45 times to California’s 11, a telling statistic to how the game was contested before the final minutes. The Golden Bears’ defense held the Ducks to low shooting totals in the first half, and that “took us out of our rhythm,” in the words of several Oregon players.
“The biggest thing they did was slow the game down and stop us from running,” Ridnour said. “We know they wanted a low-scoring game, and for the most part they did that until the last couple minutes.”
The Ducks shot 4 percent from the floor in the first half, but took only 17 shots as the game was knotted at 30 heading into the break. Cal opened the second half with a 7-2 run, but the Ducks came back and the teams traded baskets until the Bears broke away at the five-minute mark.
The best line of the night belonged to Jones, who finished with 22 points and nine rebounds. Jones was instrumental to the Ducks’ comeback, and finished with seven points in the game’s final five minutes.
“Freddie came up big,” Kent said. “He was the difference, I thought, in the game for us.”
After the game, Oregon team members spoke of growing up with the important conference win.
“For us to play like that and still find a way to win was huge for our team,” Ridnour said. “That’s a game we probably would have lost last year.”
The Ducks will test themselves once more against the No. 14 Stanford Cardinal on Saturday. Stanford is 9-3 on the season after a 67-50 victory over Oregon State on Thursday, and the Cardinal have proved to be a difficult test for the Ducks in the past. Kent still has not beaten Stanford in eight tries, and the Ducks’ losing streak in the series dates back to 1996.
Oregon will square off with Stanford at 3 p.m. Saturday at McArthur Court.