When Pacific’s Miah Davis launched a half-court shot that bounced off the backboard and through the hoop at the buzzer, it put an exclamation point on a game that didn’t deserve one.
The No. 9 Oregon men’s basketball team rolled through another game Saturday night, moving to 3-0 on the season by beating up on Pacific, 88-69, in front of 8,834 fans at McArthur Court. The Ducks shot less than 47 percent from the floor, but the Tigers didn’t have the firepower to make the game close like California-State Northridge did Monday, and Oregon pulled away from Pacific in the second half for the victory.
“It says a lot about our team, that we can have an off night shooting and still score 80 points,” Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said.
It does, indeed, show a lot about the offensive powerhouse that Oregon has become. Point guard Luke Ridnour led all scorers with 24 points, and added seven assists. Forward Luke Jackson went only 2-for-14 from the floor but notched 12 rebounds and five steals one game after he had no rebounds against Northridge.
“We challenged him, and we’re pleased with how he responded,” Kent said of Jackson.

After a forgettable first half in which the Ducks scored 39 points and led the Tigers by six as the teams headed into the locker rooms, Oregon came out fired up and on fire in the second. The Ducks went on a 17-3 run to open up the second frame, and later went on a 9-1 run to put the game out of reach.
Oregon was helped by an emotional play early in the second half, a hard foul by Ridnour on Pacific’s Demetrius Jackson that got both teams up and jawing at each other.
“That was just my competitive nature,” Ridnour said. “It got us going a little bit.”
Minutes after that tussle, the teams poured their emotion onto the court in a battle for a loose ball that lasted several seconds and had bodies from both teams flying across Mac Court. The home crowd gave both teams a rousing round of applause.
For the third time in the Oregon’s three games, at least four Ducks scored in double figures. James Davis had 14 points, and newcomers Ian Crosswhite and Andre Joseph — who scored a combined seven points against Northridge — had 12 and 14 points, respectively.
Joseph was visibly excited after hitting his first three-pointer with 4:34 left in the first half.
“It was just a sigh of relief,” Joseph said. “I was happy, that’s what it was.”
Crosswhite, meanwhile, was more excited about another statistical category.
“We accomplished one of our major goals by out-rebounding the other team tonight,” Crosswhite said.
It might not sound like a major goal, but after being out-rebounded by a combined 10 boards to smaller teams in their first two games, the Ducks tapped rebounding as a major area of concentration Saturday night. And they achieved that goal by out-rebounding Pacific 41-39.
“They know and I know that we still need to go back to the drawing board on certain things like rebounding and defense,” Kent said.
The Ducks will go back to the drawing board this week in practice as the prepare for a game against Portland — a team that beat Oregon in the preseason last year — Wednesday night at Mac Court.
Looming on the schedule is Saturday’s matchup with No. 2 Kansas in the Papé Jam in Portland. The Jayhawks surely won’t be ranked as high as No. 2 when the polls come out today — Kansas lost to unranked North Carolina and No. 7 Florida in the Preseason NIT last week — but the game is still an important one for the Ducks.
Both of Oregon’s games this week will be revenge games. Portland beat Oregon 79-78 in the Rose City last year, while Kansas ended Oregon’s season with a 104-86 win in the NCAA Tournament’s Elite Eight in March.