The men’s basketball game between the Oregon Ducks (3-0) and Portland Pilots (1-2) was not a great one for hoops fans. Despite what the final score of 80-70 would suggest, the matchup was more defined by bricks than buckets. For example, with five minutes remaining in the first half, a Jackson Shelstad 3-pointer was waved off after review for being a shot clock violation.
The first half of the game was ugly. Both teams had offensive struggles from the beginning, combining to shoot 11 of 33 in the first 10 minutes of the game. But while the Pilots trended upwards, the Ducks got worse as the period progressed. Oregon was actually ahead for the majority of play but went ice cold with about seven minutes remaining and ended the half shooting 27 percent. The result is that Portland took advantage of this to get a solid lead, which was eight points by the break. The 54 cumulative points at halftime is the lowest of the three games played by the Ducks this season, compared to 87 in the UC Riverside game and 64 in the Montana game.
"A lot of selfish play in the first half, a lot of bad shots," Oregon head coach Dana Altman said.
After returning from the locker room TJ Bamba made the first bucket of the second half, but overall it was more of the same. Misses, turnovers, shot-clock violations, fouls and free throws were the order of the day uniformly across Kilkenny Court. Statistically, the Ducks improved from the field, though this uptick was mostly cosmetic until the end of the game. Vukasin Masic drained a deep 3-pointer with five minutes left to give the Pilots a double-digit lead. After that the Ducks made six field goals in a row without missing to tighten up the score, including a Keeshawn Barthelemy downtown shot that shrunk the Pilot lead to two with the shot clock off. A Shelstad miss appeared to seal the game for Portland, but a shocking turnover by Austin Rapp gave the Ducks another chance, which Jadrian Tracey converted to force overtime.
"I'm not sure we changed much [in the second half], we just made fewer mistakes," Altman said.
In the extra period, the demoralized Pilots crumbled and missed all of their shots, but the Ducks didn't fare much better. Oregon made three of its six field goal attempts and two foul shots. A Matthew Knight Arena which had been quiet for most of the second half was suddenly roaring with excitement. Chris Austin mercifully scored a basket to prevent the Pilots from getting goosed in overtime but then missed the and-one opportunity. The Ducks ran out the clock to win by 10 and their final tally from the field was 28 of 69 for an efficiency of 40 percent, the lowest of the season.
"I want them to be aggressive, but they have to be smarter than that," Altman said.
Speaking after the game, Altman wasn't happy. "Now I'm just miserable," he said. "Our players should be, they should be embarrassed," he continued. "They outcoached us, they outplayed us.”
The 11 turnovers by the Ducks are the highest single-game total in the nascent season. Field goal percentage was one of the Ducks' most consistent aspects over the first two games. Oregon shot 50 percent in the season opener against UC Riverside and 45 percent against Montana, both being much better offensive outings than today. This efficiency is also what the team accomplished last season, in which the Ducks made a total of 982 field goals.
"Those first 36 minutes were the worst of the season honestly," Barthelemy said.
The Ducks need to turn this trend around soon. Their next game is on Sunday at home against the Troy Trojans before they travel up to Corvallis, Oregon for their first away game of the season in a renewal of hostilities with their in-state rivals the Oregon State Beavers. And as any self-respecting Duck fan knows, the return drive down I-5 is much shorter and happier after an offensive explosion, which this Duck team is more than capable of. The Ducks are a clutch team, and they can be a good shooting team, but this performance definitely wasn't their finest.