Andre Joseph spoke to reporters after practice Tuesday, but didn’t reveal much about the incident causing his one-game suspension.
The junior guard was suspended for Thursday’s game against USC after his emotional “meltdown,” as head coach Ernie Kent put it, in the second half of Saturday’s contest at Washington. The decision for his suspension was reached by Kent and the team itself.
“This is a family, and I’m glad it didn’t turn its back on me,” Joseph said. “It’s a one-game suspension, and now I have to deal with it.”
Joseph called Saturday’s incident a “disagreement” between himself and the coaching staff. Joseph left the game late in the first half with his third foul, and when Kent called on him to enter the game in the second half, he refused to go back in.
“At that particular time, my mental wasn’t ready to go back into the game, I thought it was best for me to stay on the bench,” Joseph said.

On Sunday, Joseph and Kent had “a nice little time together,” as Joseph put it. The two met for a while, and Kent told local papers that Joseph wouldn’t be suspended. But then Kent met with the team on Monday.
“The coaches came to us and gave us some options,” senior forward Robert Johnson said. “So we agreed on something that wasn’t too harsh but got the point across.”
Joseph also addressed the team Monday, but wouldn’t go into the details of the speech he gave his teammates. He expressed his regret about the entire situation to the media Tuesday.
The junior has been the sixth man of the Oregon perimeter crew for most of the season. He’s averaging 11.8 points per game in Pac-10 play, and plays an average of 26.9 minutes per game in conference action.
He won’t play a minute on Thursday.
“I’m gonna be real pumped for Saturday,” Joseph said.

Kent to Pit Crew: Be nice
Kent said he hopes The Pit Crew will be civilized this weekend — as much as it might want to rip into USC head coach Mike Bibby and soon-to-be-departed UCLA head coach Steve Lavin.
“We obviously want The Pit Crew as rowdy as they’re going to be during these games; I just want them to do it with class,” Kent said. “We don’t need to be disgracing or putting anybody down on the other team, disgracing ourselves. We don’t need to do that, because this is a class community, and we don’t want to lower ourselves to some of the other environments that I’ve been in around the country.”
Last year, The Pit Crew started a wave of controversy by chanting “deadbeat dad” and other derogatory comments at Bibby, in reference to his strained relationship with his son, Mike Bibby of the NBA’s Sacramento Kings. As the USC players left the court after the Oregon win, a fan taunted them with obscenities and jostled with assistant coaches. Bibby called the entire situation a “disgrace.”
Kent, naturally, wants to avoid a similar situation this year.
“There are some things that we’ve faced on the road, environments that I’ve not felt comfortable in, that I didn’t like either,” Kent said. “I don’t want us to be compared to those environments. I want us to have a great environment and do it in a first-class way.”

If it’s in the game…
Got a few extra Pit Crew T-shirts from years past? Bring ’em to the EMU Amphitheater on Thursday, because they’re going to need ’em.
Local EA Sports representatives will be out at the amphitheater, filming students as they proclaim EA Sports’ motto “If it’s in the game … it’s in the game!” for next year’s March Madness video game. Students selected for the shoot also have a chance to win $100 from EA Sports.
The shoot will take place Thursday from noon to 3 p.m.

Ridnour redux
As Joseph answered questions in front of a media horde on Tuesday, Luke Ridnour calmly took free throws behind him. Then he missed one, and threw the ball at the backboard in frustration.
It was another free-throw miss that had Ridnour frustrated after Saturday’s game. The junior guard missed a free throw with 1:31 left after connecting on 62-straight attempts. That number is the new conference and school record.
“So what?” said Ridnour, who didn’t talk to the media Tuesday, after Saturday’s game. “I’m trying to win games. (The streak) doesn’t matter to me.”

Bracket busted
ESPN.com’s Joe Lunardi didn’t mince words as he moved Oregon down to a No. 8 seed in this week’s edition of “Bracketology,” which dares to answer the question, “If the season ended today, what would the NCAA tournament field look like?”
“You just knew the Ducks would lose a game in Washington somehow,” Lunardi quipped in his Oregon team report. “A bad loss at home to one of the L.A. schools and this will be a ‘bubble’ team.”
That’s not what the Ducks want to hear. Lunardi has Oregon projected as a No. 8 seed in the Midwest region in Tampa, Fla., where the Ducks would play No. 9 Gonzaga and face a possible second-round matchup with No. 1-seed Florida.
Conventional wisdom says the Ducks need 20 wins to get to the NCAA Tournament, which means Oregon needs to at least split its last four games with USC, UCLA, Arizona State and Arizona.