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.