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After suffering one of its worst and most crushing home losses to Cal last year, Oregon delivered a much-needed retributive blowout at Haas Pavilion with an 87-58 win Wednesday night.
The energy of Oregon’s defense, coming off its 19-point win at home last weekend over top-10 Arizona, coupled with Cal’s subpar performance was just what the team needed to edge over the bears.
However, this did not look like the case at first. During the first five minutes of the game, Cal freshman ND Okafor was a powerhouse. He and Sam Alajiki’s offense helped Cal to build a 10-5 lead.
Oregon then started to catch up not because there had been many runs but because there were many droughts for Cal. They went on a 10-0 run and were able to gain a slight lead, but the Bears weren’t that far behind.
The turnaround happened, after the 10-minute mark, when the Ducks went for a 10-0 run and their offense clicked. In addition, everything started to align after center N’Faly Dante started driving to the basket, in turn, the shooting percentages steadily increased.
When Cal finally started to find its groove and end the Ducks’ 10-0 run, Oregon was already leading 32-21.
Then, the Ducks started to stretch their lead and keep the pressure. Any hope from Cal was quickly extinguished in the first six minutes of the second half by the Ducks making an 11-0 run. It started when Rivaldo Soares hit a three-pointer and then this was later followed by a three-pointer by forward Quincy Guerrier. Guard Will Richardson added 11 points and 10 assists.
When mentioning the consistent performance coming off Arizona, Richardson said the strength was once again in Dana Altman’s defensive strategy.
“As we’ve seen, some nights we shoot it well and some nights we don’t,” Richardson said. “But defense travels on the road and tonight I feel like we defended well. We got out rebounding in the first four to eight minutes but we turned that around.”
In the second half, Oregon forced five straight missed field goals, scored 11 straight points, and led Cal by 22 points with 15 minutes to play. Dante had 12 points and seven rebounds.
Oregon was able to achieve the road sweep it desired. Now the Ducks get back on the road to Stanford, Calif. to face Stanford at Maples Pavillion.
