Freddie Jones leads Oregon in scoring, and the Ducks are winning.
But the two don’t exactly go hand-in-hand.
Unlike the preseason thinking of most “experts,” No. 19 Oregon (14-4, 6-1) is showing that it can win games without Jones carrying the load.
Jones’s team-high 15.9 points per game are barely ahead of Luke Jackson’s 15.6, while Luke Ridnour is right behind them at 13.9 a contest. The maturity of the sophomore Lukes has helped take some of the pressure off Jones’s shoulders, allowing the senior to become more of a complete player.
“I knew I didn’t have to carry this team,” Jones said. “I mean, I got great players — not just good players — all around me.”
Still, Jones’s teammates look to him to guide them through the Pacific-10 Conference, where the Ducks are tied for first, and into a possible berth in the NCAA Tournament.
“He’s our leader,” forward Robert Johnson said. “We
follow him.”
In the past, Jones has been criticized for inconsistent play. For example, there was the weekend in the desert last March where he scored a career-high 36 points against Arizona State, but then followed that performance with just four points in a loss at Arizona.
Oregon has always needed Jones’s consistency, and this season he has shown just that. Jones has scored in double figures in 12 straight games, including reaching 15 or more nine times in that span.
“He doesn’t have to put up 30 a night for us to win,” Ridnour said. “We can have everyone score 10 and still win. It takes a lot of pressure off everyone.”
The point production from the post has also helped balance out the Ducks’ scoring. Senior Chris Christoffersen has blossomed this season, averaging 9.1 points, and Johnson is beginning to show off the versatility in his game.
In Oregon’s 63-51 victory against Oregon State on Saturday, Johnson recorded his third double-double of the year with 12 points, 11 rebounds and a career-high three blocks. Johnson helped set the tone for the Ducks, scoring six of Oregon’s first 10 points, including two long jumpers.

“I was being told to score more and be more aggressive on offense,” Johnson said.
According to Jones, the transfer forward from San Francisco has a lot more offensive moves that have yet to be showcased.
“Y’all haven’t even seen Robert’s game yet,” Jones said. “He has a lot of game that he’s just been sacrificing right now for the good of the team. So once it’s his time, y’all are going to be really surprised.”
So what exactly is
Johnson hiding?
“I’m not going to give away all of his moves,” Jones said. “But y’all will see something, I just know, later on in the year.”

So-Cal vs. Nor-Cal
The key Pac-10 games for the Ducks to keep track of this weekend involve the Bay Area teams visiting the Los Angeles schools. All four teams are among the top six spots in the conference standings, which makes the results of these games that much more important.
UCLA will be trying to bounce back from blowing a 20-point lead in a loss at Arizona when it faces Stanford at 7:30 p.m. Thursday on Fox Sports Net. The Cardinal is coming off an easy weekend sweep in Washington and Casey Jacobsen believes the experience of enduring the road atmosphere of McArthur Court has toughened up his team.
“We are learning to play in hostile environments after playing at Mac Court,” Jacobsen told ESPN.com. “I don’t know what it is about that place, because the Oregon students hate me. It’s just as bad at Cal.”

Bracketology
In this week’s “Bracketology” on ESPN.com, where Joe Lunardi projects the field of the NCAA Tournament, the Ducks remain a fifth-seed. But they’ve moved from Chicago to Albuquerque, N.M., to face 12th-seed Southern Illinois on March 14.