LAS VEGAS -- The Oregon men’s basketball team enters Las Vegas like a blackjack player who was dealt a 16 — the odds of winning the Pac-12 tournament are stacked against it.
To prolong its season, Oregon must run the table in Las Vegas and must do so without its leading scorer, Will Richardson.
Nothing short of a championship trophy will sustain the Ducks’ NCAA tournament hopes, yet that can’t distract their focus from taking a game-by-game approach to the tournament.
And on Wednesday, the Ducks made the best of their hand, beating the No. 12 seed Oregon State, 86-72.
Jacob Young, Quincy Guerrier and N’Faly Dante each stepped up and left their mark on the Ducks’ victory.
Young led the team with 23 points and 11 assists. In Richardson’s absence, Young assumed a heliocentric role taking on the bulk of the scoring and facilitating duties, rising to the occasion with that double-double.
“I thought [Young] did a really good job of making decisions,” coach Dana Altman said. “This was by far his best assists game and I think it was because of the tempo he set getting downhill.”
But Young didn’t just score and facilitate. He dribbled through the press each possession. He initiated the offense and was vocal on defense. He kept a calm demeanor handling the ball, which had a contagious effect on the entire offense.
Guerrier especially benefitted from Young’s patience. He poured in 20 points on an efficient 7 of 11 from the field. Guerrier and Dante left everything they had on the floor and had a few mid-game injuries to show for it.
On consecutive plays, they both limped off the court but were able to return minutes later and close out the Ducks’ victory.
Dante, who remained on the ground for a few minutes after injuring his left foot, seemed unphased by the injury. He returned to the game with 6 minutes remaining and controlled the paint on both sides of the court down the stretch. Dante provided 15-points on 7-of-8 shooting and 5 blocks, each one as emphatic as the next.
The Ducks took a 10-point lead with 2 minutes remaining, so Young started to dribble the air out of the ball. The shot-clock ticked down as Young made his move to the basket. His layup trickled off the rim right into Dante’s hands for a rim-rattling slam.
The Beavers quickly inbounded the ball and Glenn Taylor Jr. tried to go coast-to-coast to cut the deficit back to 10, but Dante recovered and erased Taylor Jr.’s layup with a chase-down block.
“I had a similar block in the first half, so I knew I could do it again,” Dante said. “I just tried to do what I can for the team to help us win.”
Altman kept a tight seven-man rotation, apart from Nate Bittle’s 3 minutes, and each of those seven seemed to be on the same page for the full 40-minute bout.
With the win, the No. 5-seeded Ducks move onto the quarterfinals to face No. 4 Colorado at 2:30 p.m. PT Thursday. The teams split their regular-season meetings with the road team winning each.
“We’re going to have to be really focused defensively and on the boards,” Altman said. Our defensive effort will be very important on Thursday. … We know we got our work cut out for us.”
They’ll need a similar buy-in from their entire rotation to emerge victorious and keep their hopes of winning the Pac-12 tournament alive.
