MADISON, Wis. — Oregon head coach Ernie Kent stopped for a moment and closed his eyes as the madness swirled around him before the tip-off of this monumental game.
The moment stretched into a half-minute.
With bands blaring, announcers jabbering and fans screaming, Kent ended the serene minute by crossing his chest, then clapping his hands in support of his Duck basketball team about to take the floor.
Whether or not Kent’s prayer was answered, the No. 2 Ducks’ prayers to knock off top-seeded Kansas in the Elite Eight were not. The Jayhawks advanced to the Final Four with a 104-83 victory in front of 16,310 fans at the Kohl Center in Madison on March 24.
“This one hurts because you’re so close to the Final Four,” Kent said after the game.
Kent’s words mirrored the disappointment of the entire Oregon team, despite the fact that the Ducks were underdogs to the Jayhawks, who went through much of the season ranked No. 1 in the country.
“Coming into this game there was no doubt in my mind that we could win,” Oregon senior guard Freddie Jones said after the contest. “I think if we were a team that didn’t feel we could win, we would be happy right now. But we’re not satisfied with how far we came because we expected ourselves to get to the Final Four and compete for the whole thing.”
Instead, Kansas competed in the Final Four, but was knocked out by Maryland in the semifinal game Saturday. In that game the Jayhawks displayed few traits of the juggernaut that steamrolled Oregon one week prior.
Kansas was relentless on the boards in the Elite Eight contest, outrebounding Oregon 63-34. Two Jayhawk players — Drew Gooden and Nick Collison — combined for one more total rebound than the entire Duck squad.
“They really did control the boards, and that was a big thing in the game,” Oregon forward Luke Jackson said. “They got a lot of second-chance points.”
Jackson’s observation was on the mark. Kansas scored 31 second-chance points to Oregon’s 12.
But despite the dominance of the Jayhawk big men, the game still lived up to its “track meet” billing. At the outset it was clear the both teams wanted to run the floor — fast. The first half took only 45 minutes to complete.
“They ran just as fast as us,” Oregon guard Anthony Lever said. “We were going to keep running no matter what.”
The fast play led to 20 total steals and 32 turnovers in the game.
And a lot of spectacular dunks.
Jones was the perpetrator of many of those dunks, his most spectacular and important dunk coming with three minutes elapsed in the second half. The play unfolded on a fast break, when point guard Luke Ridnour fed Jones a beautiful alley-oop pass, and Jones threw it down with two furious hands to make the score 56-52 Kansas.
Four points was as close as Oregon would get to Kansas for the rest of the contest. The Jayhawks ballooned the lead to 14 points with 9:49 left, but the Ducks came back behind three Lever three-pointers to make the score 77-72 with 8:06 remaining. That’s when Oregon went frosty. The Ducks went the next 3:56 without a point, while the Jayhawks scored 12.
“We didn’t shoot as well as we have been and we’re capable of,” Ridnour said.
Jones led the Ducks with 32 points, one short of his career high, and was named to the All-Midwest Regional Team. Ridnour was also named to the team, along with Gooden, the region’s Most Outstanding Player, Collison, Keith Langford from Kansas and James Thomas from Texas.
Thomas was named to the team in part because of his 15-point, 11-rebound performance against Oregon in the Sweet 16. Two days before the Ducks clashed with the Jayhawks, they squeaked by the Longhorns on a last-second shot by Jones, who ended as the hero despite scoring only four points.
But his last two were the most important. With less than 20 seconds left in the contest and the score tied, Jones held the ball at the half-court line, then drove on Texas guard Fredie Williams. With 2.8 seconds left he elevated and finger-rolled the ball into the hoop to give the Ducks the 72-70 victory.
“Freddie hit a huge, huge basket at the end of the game,” Kent said.
That win was Oregon’s third in this year’s postseason, which is three more postseason wins than the Ducks had in 42 previous seasons.
At least Oregon can hold onto that as the Ducks form their prayers for next season.