“Coach Hurley trusts us and we have the same amount of trust in him”, senior Torian Graham said in the locker room after the victory.
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The Ducks went 16-2 to share the conference title with Arizona but earned the top seed in the tournament based on their 85-58 win over the Wildcats last month. Fultz has operated mostly off the radar for a Washington team that’s 2-16 in the league – and he is not expected to play in Wednesday night’s Pac-12 Tournament opener because of a knee injury, meaning his college career is nearly certainly done.
Game 9: Game 5 victor vs. The Beavers cut the final margin in half, from 42 in the first to 21 in the second.
Dillon Brooks was named the Pac-12 Player of the Year and took home first team All-Conference honors.
Each year, the conference’s 12 coaches vote for each category. Domingo has been an inefficient offensive option all season long, averaging just 2.1 points per game on 20.2 percent shooting from the field and a miserable 44.4 percent from the free-throw line.
ASU gets OR in the second round.
The Ducks put on dominating performances against the Utes, Cardinals, and Beavers during the regular season and should have no problem against any of those teams.
In California, Oregon State meets an opponent it couldn’t keep up with 12 days ago. It was reminiscent of Cal’s slow start against the Beavers at Haas on February 24 before the Bears eventually won 76-46.
The Bears scored the next nine points and added another 9-0 run soon after to lead 20-15.
OSU’s Matt Dahlen played just six minutes (five in the second half) but provided a spark. All other games will take place on the Pac-12 Network, including the four first-round games from March 8.
Here’s the scenario: OR must first get through the Pac-12 Tournament in Las Vegas this week before heading to the NCAA Tournament. They will need to perform better on both ends of the court for all 40 minutes. We went to Omaha a couple years ago to play Wisconsin and they filled it up, and then when we played them in Milwaukee it was nuts.
Aside from the Wildcats’ ability to battle through injuries and suspensions, losing only to those teams is “the other thing” Sean Miller said he is most proud of about his squad.
ASU led 60-59 before Brooks made two free throws with 3:15 to play.
“I felt like we had the emotion going our way going into that overtime period”, Humphrey said.
OR definitely has an advantage on its road to the Pac-12 title. Cal is on the NCAA bubble and likely needs a deep run this week to return to the NCAA tournament. Arizona (27-4), which shared the conference title with the Ducks at 16-2, is ranked No. 7.
If Cal is going to beat Utah tomorrow, they’ll have to do a better job of being assertive on offense and being more aggressive in terms of taking shots that are presented to them.
“It’s not like we have a ton of momentum, but insane things can happen”, Tinkle said. Though the Bruins have beaten every team on their schedule, as Steve Alford likes to point out, they are just 16th in the nation in RPI, a statistic favored by bracketologists that accounts for strength of schedule. We’ve done it in stretches.
That’s because, barring a surprise, we’ll get OR against either UCLA OR Arizona again.
The 6-9 Bell is averaging 10.8 points and a team-high 7.9 rebounds (10th in the conference). This tournament is expected to be a race between three of the elite teams in the country in Oregon, UCLA (+170 to win the Pac-12 Tournament), and Arizona (+265).
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Tres Tinkle was selected to the second team, while Matt Dahlen, Tanner Sanders and Eubanks received honorable mention.
