Recap: Oregon Outgunned and Outmanned Against Cal

Strangely enough, I really enjoyed this game. The score doesn't reflect how much better Oregon played as compared to last week. Although to be fair, anything would have been better than last week. With Odia, Longmire, and Wiley all out of action, Ernie proclaimed that we would see "Golden State Warriors Basketball" and for the first half, he was absolutely right. A lot of action, up and down the floor, good open looks...just have to make shots. Jtlight would have to actually admit that we had an offense if he watched the first half. There was more movement by the team that I have seen in a long time. In the end though, having a short rotation after a very long, difficult season was just too much and Oregon just got destoryed in the paint. Tough loss, but I take some comfort in the fact that U of Oregon at Berkley is still in the Pac-10 Title hunt. On to the post game talk from Ernie

On the start of the second half

We talked at halftime. I thought the first five minutes of the second half, there we were again where the game just got away from us again with bad play, bad decisions, bad turnovers, bad defense, boom boom boom boom, there they are, into their rhythm again.

 another comment about the second half

The bigger thing in the game was start of the second half, giving them seven out of eight times they scored coming down the floor. That was fatigue and, at the same time, we couldn't score on the other end. That was a short bench. 

Lots of talk from Ernie about fatigue in this game and you could really see it on the floor. The first half, especially the first 10-15 minutes, Oregon was flying all over the floor, moving like crazy, fast break, playing in your face defense. You could start to see it trail off at the end of the first half and then it blew up right after halftime. The team came out sluggish, all the movement stopped on offense and Cal players were starting to beat Oregon players off the dribble more. First half was all about great interior passing for Cal. Second half was just out hustling a tired team.

My favorite Ernie quote from the postgame....

Part of your defense is scoring the basketball and you've got to score. You've got to score when you get open looks, you've got to score in transition and we didn't score obviously to stay in the game with them when our defense broke down a little bit because we were a little big stagnant because of what weapons we didn't have on that bench over there.

This statement essentially sums up how this game went. In a lot of ways, that's how the whole year as gone. You just have to capitalize on your opportunities. Cal is making a push at the right time. People may get lost in the fact that they lost to Oregon State earlier and we had one of our better games down in the bay area. The Bears are hot right now, only 1 game out first place. As for us, we get a shot at 9th place Stanford on Saturday. Just remember, we still could get 9th place!