Oregon 76 Oregon State 73

Kyle Jeffers, uh, defends Aaron Brooks



The University Of Oregon Ducks improved their record to 13-0 by holding off the Oregon State Beavers 76-73 at Gill Coliseum in Corvallis Saturday afternoon.


The first half was an uptempo, lively affair with both teams shooting well over 50%, along with great percentages from beyond the three-point stripe as well. There was some sloppy play, but there was also some good defense in the mix as well, and I do recall sitting in the stand when the score, halfway through the first half, was 23-19 in favor of the Beavers and thinking that sometimes that used to be the halftime score in some years when both teams were throwing bricks at the basket.

The Beavers had forged a 30-19 lead with 7:18 to go in the first half, but the defense suddenly improved, helped a bit by the 1,000+ Duck fans in attendance who were loudly chanting DE-FENSE in the cavernous Coliseum, which was a bit empty, maybe, due to the student body being largely gone from campus, and from some boosters who hadn't made it back from yesterday's Sun Bowl in El Paso, TX. The Ducks ended the half on a 22-4 run to take a 41-34 lead.


It still wasn't a great game for the Ducks, there were several times down the stretch when a big physical presence in the paint might've altered the outcome of several OSU layups, there were a couple of times when Chamberlain Oguchi gambled on defense by anticipating a pass only to get beat by his man, with the Beavers then scoring by quickly whipping the ball inside, and true freshman Tajuan Porter played like it, the worst play was when he was stripped by Marcel Jones with less than a minute to go, and the resulting basket ended with the Ducks clinging to a 3 point lead with 31 seconds to play.


Bryce Taylor had a monster game, Maarty Leunen was his usual dependable self, Aaron Brooks was everywhere, sometimes too quickly, not sure of how many turnovers he had, but I'd bet it was about equal to the number of assists that he had.


Good job to the Duck fans present for sure, in the several years that I've been attending the men's Civil War basketball game in Corvallis, it was the best and loudest showing yet by the good guys.


BTW: even though the Ducks are 13-0 right now, I'm hardly making plans to attend the Final Four to watch them, the Pac-10 looks plenty tough right now, for instance the Washington State Cougars put up a helluva fight against UCLA on Thursday, and beat USC today.


RECAP