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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 30, 1998)
Oregon 80, Oregon state 57 Pac-10 Overall W L W L Stanford 8 1 11 5 Arizona 7 2 13 4 Oregon 7 2 11 6 UCLA 7 2 11 6 Washington 3 5 12 5 Washington State 3 5 9 8 Arizona State 3 5 7 10 USC 3589 California 1 7 5 13 Oregon State 1 8 6 12 Hughes goes up for two of her game-high 24 points during Oregon's 80-57 win over Oregon State in Corvallis. Hughes hit her first four shots from the field. 1 NICK MEDLEY/Emerald Win: OSU didn’t execute * Continued from Page 11 all jumpers, and finished with a game-high 24 points. She hit nine of her 14 shots and connected on all five of her free-throw at tempts "Nat came to play tonight,” Range said. "She did a great job of handling the offense. She wanted the ball." Junior Sonja Curtis, one Duck who is be ing asked to help replace the lossofMeharry inside, hit five of seven attempts from the field and five of six attempts from the line to finish with 10 points. “Sonja is very capable of doing those things,” Range said. Junior Natasha O'Brien continued her re cent hot streak In scoring 14 points on a four-of-seven shooting performance. Fresh man Angelina Wolvert added 11 points. Shooting guard l.isa Bowyer was the only Oregon starter not to score in double figures. The Ducks’ balanced scoring is something Range said they will need to continue to win in Meharry’s absence. Oregon started Thursday’s game with a scoring spurt, jumping out to an 8-0 lead be fore the Beavers stormed back to within four, 13-9. The Ducks then went on a 14-4 run to lead 27-13 five minutes later, and after an other brief Oregon State scoring spurt, the Ducks ended the half on that 20-5 run to lead 47-24 at the break. Over the final seven minutes, 28 seconds of the half, the Beavers hit only three shots from the field. On the other hand, in the first 11 minutes of the game, Oregon hit 11 of its first 14 shots from the field. “They were hitting everything," said Ore gon State head coach Judy Spoelstra. “They came ready to play." Oregon State was successful, at times, with its high-low game that helped sopho more center Sissel Pierce score 19 points on a nine-of-18 performance from the field be fore she fouled out with just under two min utes left to play. The problem, Spoelstra said, was the game plan was to get the ball inside 90 per cent of the time — which didn’t happen. "Our guards let us down," Spoelstra said. "I think tlie problem was our four guards who strayed from their game plan.” The Ducks open the second half of con ference play at UCLA next Friday and at Southern California next Sunday. Ducks: Inside players play well in win * Continued from Page 11 “It just keeps us going,” said point guard Natalie Hughes, who led all scorers with 24 points. “We’re on a roll right now, and it was good that we played so well and beat them by a lot because it shows we can play without Bri.” Sonja Curtis, a 6-foot-2 junior, stepped into Meharry’s starting power forward position and gave the Ducks 27 productive minutes, scoring a season-high 16 points on five for seven shooting from the field. If the pressure to replace Meharry affected her, Curtis did n’t show it against the Beavers. “I felt pretty good,” said Curtis, who nailed her first three-pointer of the season midway through the second half. “I’m pretty happy with how I played but there’s still a lot of things I could improve on, like I could have gotten on the boards more.” Curtis finished with just four rebounds for the game. The win was important for the psyche of the Oregon players, who were a bit unsure of what life without Meharry on the court would be like, Curtis said, espe dally before heading into the sec ond half of the Pacific-10 Confer ence season. “I think it was good for us to have a warm-up game to just get our confidence up and know that we can survive and we can play,” Curtis said. “We were kind of un sure. In practice we were doing fine, it’s just you never know until a game situation. I think this was a great game to get all the bugs worked out.” The win also sent a statement to the rest of the Pac-10 that the Ducks will be a force to reckon with, even without Meharry, Hughes said. "Everyone thinks we suck, to put it nicely,” she said. “I think [other Pac-10 teams] are going to look past us because we don’t have Bri, so hopefully that’ll help and we’ll be able to stomp on some people that think we aren’t good enough.” Since Meharry’s injury last Sat urday, Oregon players and head coach Jody Runge have said they would need the posts to collec tively improve their games a bit. The Ducks got solid contribu tions across the board from their inside players Thursday night. In addition to Curtis’ produc tion, center Angelina Wolvert pumped in 11 points, and small forward Natasha O'Brien con tributed 14 to continue her im proved play of late. Down to only two true posts on the roster, Runge has been adamant about the fact that Curtis and Wolvert need to stay out of foul trouble. For the most part, they did that Thursday. “Both [Curtis) and Angelina are very aware of having to play with out getting in foul trouble,” Runge said. “I thought they did a very good job of that. With the excep tion of Angelina’s first foul, in which she was kind of out of po sition, I thought the fouls that they got were acceptable fouls.” Wolvert ended up with four fouls on the night, but three of those came in the second half, long after the game had been de cided. In fact, the game was basically over just 10 minutes into it after Oregon jumped out to a double digit lead. Without Meharry on the court, life does go on. Li NICK MEDLEY/Emerald Curtis bad a big game in Meharry's absence, scoring 16points and hitting five of seven attempts from the field.
