Well, that was quick. Win 2 on the road. Give 2 back at home immediately. That's a quick way to turn things around 360 degrees, right back where you started.
Like I mentioned in my preview, shooting was a key. On both ends of the court. We couldn't knock down a shot to save our lives. No starter scored more than 7 points. As a team we shot 37%, and 4-14 from 3. ASU had 2 players make as many 3's as our entire team did. Abbot was 4-7 and Kuksiks was 4-6.
The team gave up halfway through the first half when we were down 15 points or so. You could visibly see them sag, and they were just going through the motions from that point on. That's a very bad sign of things to come.
A loss to Arizona will be the final nail in the coffin for this team and, right now, I would probably predict it to happen. Its tough to follow a quitting act with a good performance. Once you quit one time, it just becomes easier and easier to quit again, and harder and harder to put out the effort.
ASU is a strange team. They play that slow down zone on D, and they bomb away from deep on Offense. We gave them looks from 3 early, that killed us, and its a stupid way to defend them. They don't want to take 2 pointers. McMillan drove the ball into the middle repeadetly and we would collapse and allow him to kick it out. That's a poor strategy against that team. They don't do well shooting inside the 3 point line and McMillan, in particular, isn't looking to. Besides, on most of these plays Dunigan had the middle pretty well covered. There's no reason for perimeter defenders to collapse against ASU.
Honestly, that's a problem with our defense in general. We have to have more faith from the coaches, and the other players, that Dunigan is going to block shots in the paint. And Dunigan's got to go out and do it. Right now, when one of our perimeter defenders is beat, we see one of the following happen.
A) We'll reach, or grab, from behind. When one of our guards is beat, they'll often just grab their man and give the foul instead of a drive.
B) Other perimeter defenders will collapse into the paint to try and give help.
There's just no need for either of those to happen. Our players aren't showing the faith in Dunigan to go and alter shots in the paint, despite the fact that he's proven to be capable of doing so. Too many times this year, other players have given up stupid fouls when Dunigan was right there to contest the shot anyway. In fact, at the end of the OSU game, Longmire doing just that may have cost us the game. After we cut it to 3 points with 57 seconds left, OSU missed the shot on their following possession. We failed to rebound and Brandt, for OSU got the ball in the paint. Dunigan was right in front of him, and he took the ball right up into Dunigan for what would have been an easy cap, but Longmire fouled him hard to prevent him from making the attempt. Simply unacceptable.
On defense, we need to pressure players better on the perimeter. We either don't do it at all, or do stupid things after we get beat. You just need to pressure, and if you get beat, you need to have faith that your big guys will be there to alter shots. That might not always be what you want to do against teams that can't shoot from outside, like Washington or UCLA, but especially against a team like ASU you have to. They don't even want to take 2 pointers.
Arizona can be hit or miss from deep, much like us. Like us, you never know if Arizona is going to show up to play or not, or if they'll be able to score or not, or if they'll play defense or not. But, based on a somewhat better performance, losing closely at OSU, I'd give them the edge in tomorrow's game.
But its truly do or die time for Oregon. The first 2 games gave us an opportunity. The last 2 games would have allowed us to build on that opportunity. Now we're back to square 1, and this is our first "must-win" game. We have won a must-win in quite some time, since we swept the Arizona home stand to make the tournament in 2008.
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