Baby steps.
The No. 23 Oregon men’s basketball team, in need of a Pacific-10 Conference win after dropping three of its first four Pac-10 games, took steps back toward greatness with a 79-68 win over Oregon State in front of a sold-out crowd at McArthur Court on Saturday.
But the steps were small.
The Ducks, wearing their different yellow “lightning” jerseys, came out and played the same — downright sloppily — as they played in their two losses in the Bay Area last weekend. Oregon committed 11 turnovers in the first frame and went into the locker room leading 34-31.
“We talked about (the sloppiness) at halftime, and I did not have a problem with that at all,” Duck head coach Ernie Kent said. “They were hustle mistakes; they were mistakes trying to do too much; they were not because of lack of effort.”
“We came out aggressive, but that’s what we needed to do in this game,” said guard Luke Ridnour, who scored 28 points in the game to lead all scorers. “We set the tone, and we finally got them to break in the second half a little bit.”
Ridnour simply took over the game in the second frame, leading the Ducks on a charge that was reminiscent of the preseason runs they used to blow out teams like Kansas and Minnesota.
“If there was a way for me to get the ball out of Luke Ridnour’s hands…” mused Oregon State coach Jay John, when asked what he would have done differently in the second half. “He probably had his hands in about every basket in the last six, seven, eight minutes of the game. It seemed like he was either feeding, shooting or shooting free throws.”
Ridnour’s play helped the Ducks go on an 11-4 run midway through the second half to put Oregon ahead by 10 points with 7:07 remaining. The Beavers never got within eight points over the rest of the contest as the Ducks put the game away.
Luke Jackson scored 19 points but went 6-for-19, or 32 percent, from the field and 2-for-5 from three-point land. But Jackson had six rebounds, a block and two steals, and Kent was pleased with his effort.
“The two Lukes jumped back into their rhythm again, they got back on their game,” Kent said.
Without Jackson, the Ducks may not have been in the game at all in the first half. The junior forward opened the game with a three, then hit a fadeaway jumper and an alley-oop dunk from Ridnour for Oregon’s first seven points of the contest.
“People kind of labeled us as not playing hard, and that’s not our team; we don’t want to be labeled as not being competitive,” Jackson said. “So we just came out and tried to be the aggressor on both ends.”
Oregon State forward Phillip Ricci led the Beavers with 24 points. But Oregon was able to shut down forward Brian Jackson, Oregon State’s other talented big man, who had nine points and was in foul trouble for much of the game.
The Ducks dominated both big men and the rest of the Beaver team on rebounds, hauling down 42 boards to Oregon State’s 30. The Ducks were led on the boards, surprisingly, by backup guard Andre Joseph, who hauled in a career-high 10 rebounds.
“We’ve talked and talked and talked about doing the little things,” Kent said. “It’s not so much about us making them or telling them any more, it’s about them just doing those things. They’re doing everything right for us, but they’ve got to learn how to bounce back, how to make themselves ready and how to handle themselves.”
Oregon will host Washington on Thursday and Washington State on Saturday as the Ducks continue Pac-10 action. The Huskies have been a thorn in the Ducks’ side over the past few years. Washington and Oregon have split the regular-season series in each of the past three years.