9th place eeked out. TP, 5 threes back of the record.

Not that its any suprise, but reports have been out all weekend stated that Ernie has been fired. I'll talk more about that and my thoughts on coaching replacements in another post.

For now, the only real interesting thing left is to see if Tajuan is going to break the Pac-10 all time record for 3 pointers. Right now, he's 4 back of Salim Stoudamire's mark, needing 5 to break the record.

Getting 2 games in the Pac-10 tournament would help his chances, rather than needing to make 5 against the Coogs. And we get an immediate rematch against the last place Coogs on Wednesday. It can be tough to beat a team 3 times in a season, but if this season showed anything, its that we seem to just match up better with a few teams, going 6-0 against WSU, USC and UCLA and 1-11 against the rest of the conference.

Its hard to be excited about a rematch against the Coogs, probably for either team, and for either players or fans. And you can expect nobody to be there, considering there is only 1 play-in game this year, due to USC's postseason ban.

You'd like to see them have a little success there, though with a new coach coming in, and a new system, its hard to say that it would really matter all that much. To be honest, I just want to see Tajuan break the record. I'd expect his teamates to be looking for him often.

Well, that should do it.

We are now assured of playing in the Pac-10 tournament play-in game, against either Stanford or WSU. A win tommorow is meaningless, other than keeping us out of 10th place. As I said a few weeks ago, it was looking like WSU or us for last place and, sure enough it comes down to this final game to decide who's the ultimate loser.

The Pac-10 is horrendous this year and finishing at the bottom should all but assure that tommorow is Ernie's last game coaching at Mac Court. There may have been the slimmest of chances that he would remain, after last week's sweep in southern California, but those chances went out the window last night.

After the first half, it looked like the team might actually be capable of pulling off the win. And, to point out just how poor the conference is this year, had we won, coupled with a win tommorow( over the team that shares last place with us) might have put us as high as 5th place in the conference. So yeah, there was a chance he'd stay on, before the second half meltdown.

It should be an interesting month.

Mike Bellotti and Ernie Kent coached at Oregon for a combined 27 seasons, and both will be replaced about a year apart. It will be interesting to see where this new age for Oregon athletics takes us.

Tajuan shoots himself back in the chase

Well, it looked like a near impossibility heading into the weekend, but Tajuan is right back in the chase for the all time Pac-10 3 point mark. His 7 threes today puts him at 334, 8 behind Salim Stoudamire, with a minimum of 3 games to play. Still, he needs to shoot it better than he has most of conference play, but 2 or 3 per game is at least in reach.

Some more interesting thoughts and numbers:

The win puts the Ducks back at .500 for the season at 14-14. 1 of only 6 Pac-10 teams that are .500 or better in this down season.

The Ducks have swept 2 road trips. The only Pac-10 team to do so.

The Ducks have won 4 road games total. Only ASU has done better, with 5 road wins. No matter what happens in our final 2, we can't finish with a better home record than road record.

Last place is much less of a forgone conclusion after this weekend. We will still be tied for last (pending the outcomes of OSU@USC and UW@WSU), but the bottom half teams are now all within a game of each other. Both OSU and WSU have the same number of wins as us. Whichever of them lose will be tied at the bottom. And of course, OSU/WSU/Oregon all play next week which will likely settle last place.


The loser of Arizona/Stanford (as I type this a 2 point game in the second half) will also have only 7 wins after this weekend. Stanford has only Cal left, and Arizona has the SoCal schools at home.

There could be a big log-jam at the bottom of the conference after next week, delving into tiebreakers to decide who plays in the play-in games.

Last win at USC was 2006

Not much of a meaningfull game for either team, and it was a very ugly game. Typical for USC this year, they've been playing the uglyiest, lowest scoring games in the conference all year.

But it was nice to get a win, and a road win at that. We now have 3 road wins to only 2 home wins and at least have managed to break a couple strings of losses. We hadn't won at USC since 2006. Our win at Washington earlier was the first since 2002.

If you're wondering, we haven't won at UCLA since 2003. UCLA's a bit banged up, and not very good to begin with, so who knows? maybe they'll be another streak broken tommorow.

We are closing with games against the 4 teams we beat in the first half of the season, so perhaps we simply match up better with these teams.

There are some really bad overall records in the Pac-10 this year. Only 5 teams with winning records at this point

UCLA 13-14
Arizona 13-14
Stanford 13-15
Oregon State 12-15
Oregon 13-14

1 or 2 of these teams might get to .500. But, maybe not.

Washington State is the only shot at a better than last place finish.

In a year which the Pac-10 is as bad, if not the worst, that its ever been we are solidifying ourselves at the bottom. Alone in last place after last night's performance, the last chance we have at "rising" out of the cellar is if Washington State can join us there. We got the win at their place, and a half game ahead of us, they look to be the only team we have a chance to catch in the closing weeks of the season.

A win or two from them will set them apart, even if we do manage to beat them head to head, but they've been nearly as bad as us lately, losing 6 of their last 7 games, mostly double digit blowouts.

So, if you're rooting for a 9th place finish, root against the Coogs.

We couldn't do much to beat the 9th place team at home last night, so it might be a futile hope anyway.

Swept by our last three.

The start to the second half of conference play has gone as bad as possible. We are playing worse now than we were to start conference play and the last 3 teams to paste us have now swept the season series against us.

With Stanford and Cal coming to Mac Court this week, it will be interesting to see how much, or how little, this team cares about things anymore. Stanford shares the Pac-10 basement with us and is the "easiest" game left on our schedule. Lose that one and an 0-fer second half is a real possibility.

Tajuan did move into 2nd place on the Pac-10 career 3 point leaders list, for what it's worth. With him needing 18 more and probably only 7 games left, first place is becoming unlikely.

Talk about vastly different expectations.

You've got to love quotes like this one, from the Oregonian, about Oregon and Oregon State.

"The Beavers are a solid, competitive program right now that just swept the Ducks, who are floundering."

OSU is right with us, at 4-6 in the Pac-10, with an even worse overall record at 10-12. OSU's ability to beat Oregon head to head doesn't make them either solid or competitive right now. They've lost 4 of their last 6 games, are just 1 month removed from a 50+ point beating at the hands of Seattle U (in their first season of division 1 basketball), and now half of their Pac-10 win total is over a hapless Oregon team.

The Oregonian article is titled, "There's a clear difference between Oregon State and Oregon", and it goes on to detail why OSU is superior and headed in the right direction.

The title of the article is apt, though not for the "analysis" given inside it. There is a clear difference and that difference is expectations. Because OSU isn't better than Oregon right now, despite the result on the court. Which is not to say that Oregon is any better than them this year either. Oregon isn't better than Washington, Washington State, UCLA or USC either, despite beating those 4 teams. Both Oregon teams are among the most pathetic teams in a pathetic league. OSU has scoreboard.

OSU somehow got worse from last year, despite losing very little from their team, and fans and writers are happy with it. Oregon is likely going to fire the coach after this poor season. The difference between the 2 is that OSU is happy to be among the pathetic, while Oregon won't stand for it long.

So, I hope to continue to see articles lambasting the Ducks for their failure and praising the Beavers for their failure, because that does highlight the difference between the two programs.