Live blog coverage

Get posts via RSS     Questions & comments     Back to the blog

Oregon win as Kent envisioned it Saturday

Posted by Mike V. at 2:02 PM on Mar 18    Comments (0)

During Saturday's press conference Oregon coach Ernie Kent spoke about how he allows his players the green light to shoot at any time and that they don't have to worry about looking at the bench wondering if it was a bad decision. He prefers putting his emphasis on defense.

"I'm defensive minded, really," he said. "That's where I put my attention. You have to defend otherwise they're going to take you out of that ball game."

The problem would be how to defend a Winthrop team that had a big post and more size at guard.
Turned out things went exactly as he envisioned it. The Ducks flourished in the uptempo game, just as he told his audience.

To overcome the size disadvantage defensively, "we have done a good job of fronting the post and having great weak side help," he said. "And with that the ball has a hard time getting in there."

True to his word, Oregon's swarmy defense basically eliminated burly 6-10 New Zealander Craig Bradshaw as a factor.

And the Ducks wiped out Winthrop in a hail of "green light" 3-pointers (11 for 23) during the 75-61 win to advance to the Sweet 16 next weekend in St. Louis.

Aaron Brooks had 22 points and hit five 3-pointers and Tajuan Porter put second-half distance between the teams with three more and a total of 11 points in the first 4:35 of the second half.

« Back to the blog  /  Comments on this post are now closed.