Before Oregon even set foot in Los Angeles this weekend, head coach Ernie Kent said its two-game stretch against USC and UCLA was Oregon’s trial run before hitting the Pacific-10 Tournament this week.
If this week’s tournament is anything like the Ducks’ performance, it could be an early exit.
The momentum of its two-game home winning streak was emphatically stopped in its 94-68 loss to No. 20 UCLA and its 80-66 loss to USC last Thursday.
Oregon (8-22, 2-16) allowed UCLA’s senior guard Josh Shipp to score a career-high 28 points in his last game at Pauley Pavilion. Oregon freshman Drew Wiley led the Ducks with 18 points on six three-pointers, and he added an assist and a turnover. Oregon’s junior guard Tajuan Porter, one of the hottest Ducks during its two-game winning streak, was held to nine points and five assists, but had five turnovers.
The Ducks, down one to USC at halftime before allowing to Trojans to run away with the win, were only behind by seven at the break in Westwood. Then the Bruins went on to outscore UO 47-28 in the second half. Helped by a scoring drought by the Ducks of nearly three minutes in the second half, UCLA pushed its lead from four points at 55-51 to 16 on a layup by junior guard Michael Roll that had them up 67-51. The lead would balloon to 30 points with just more than a minute remaining.
“It’s a historical court,” Wiley said of his first experience at UCLA’s storied court. “We hung in there for the first 17 minutes and thought we were going to be OK, but we broke down too much.”
The Bruins outrebounded the Ducks 45-27.
“UCLA is a very physical basketball team,” Kent said. “They just broke us down.”
Oregon is now without a single road win in conference play this season.
The Ducks made 12 three-pointers to tie a season high, and shot 45 percent in the first half and 47 from three-point range. Everything cooled off in the second half, with the Ducks dropping to 32 percent from the field and 30 percent from three as the Bruins heated up, going from 51 percent in the first half to an impressive 63 percent (19-of-30) in the second. Oregon’s demise brought out the Bruins’ best strengths.
Now Oregon has to hope that the same kind of result won’t happen this week when it returns to LA.
The team announced its annual awards Sunday at its team banquet. Porter was named the team MVP, voted on by the players, in part because of his team-best 15.2 points per game. Freshman guard Matt Humphrey won the Jesse Nash Most Improved Player award, junior forward Joevan Catron won the John Warren award for most inspirational player and the team rebounds leader award. Freshman guard Nicholas Fearn won the Harry Ritchie Scholar award for his 3.16 GPA in business administration.
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