Sports Editor:
Adam Jude
adamjude@dailyemerald.com
Assistant Sports Editor:
Jeff Smith
jeffsmith@dailyemerald.com
Tuesday, November 6,2001
ON THE WEB
The Oregon volleyball team takes
on the Pilots in Portland tonight.
www.dailyemerald.com
Ducks ready to open season at first exhibition
■ The Oregon men’s basketball team will use its
first exhibition game to figure out where it stands
By Peter Hockaday
Oregon Daily Emerald
The Oregon men’s basketball team has been prac
ticing for a month now. They’ve played scrimmages
and pick-up games.
Tonight, the Ducks will have a scrimmage of sorts. \
Only the other team won’t be wearing green and yel
low. And they’ll have Australian accents.
Oregon tips off its season at McArthur Court
tonight at 7 p.m. against the Basketball,Travelers
from Brisbane, Australia. The contest is the first of
two exhibition games for the Ducks, who open the
regular season Nov. 15.
Oregon head coach Ernie Kent said the Ducks will
try to use tonight’s game as a checkpoint for the
young season.
“I don’t care if it’s an exhibition game or a Pac-10
game,” Kent said. “There are certain responsibilities
for everyone on this team. If we have every guy do
ing the right job at the right time, that will tell us a
lot about our basketball team right now.”
Kent said that Duck fans can expect a more tena
cious, tight defense than last season. Oregon gave up
almost 78 points per game last season. The addition
of assistant coach Fred Litzenberger, who has a rep
utation for coaching good defenses, has helped the
Ducks’ “D” this season, according to Kent.
“Our defense has come a long way,” Kent said.
“So far we’ve proven to be very coachable.”
On offense, the Ducks will rely on a trio of guards
for point production and will test out a revolving
spice rack of big men in an attempt to find strength
in the middle. The Ducks will test the early-season
presence of senior center Chris Christoffersen and
will also test out returning big men Mark Michaelis
and Jay Anderson. Newcomers Robert Johnson and
Brian Helquist, 6-foot-8 and 6-foot-9, respectively,
could also see playing time.
Guard Freddie Jones, who was selected to
ESPN.corn’s preseason All Pac-10 Team, said the of
fense will be looking to put up big numbers on the
Travelers.
“We’re going to try to play our game,” Jones
said. “We want to cut down on turnovers and play
hard.”
Jones will most likely square off with former Duck
Terik Brown, who is now a member of the Basketball
Travelers. Brown, a guard, graduated in 1999, and
shows up several places in the Oregon record books.
His 1,152 points put him 15th on the school scoring
list, and he holds the University’s second place in ca
reer three-pointers with 223.
Turn to Basketball, page 6
__1I
Thomas Patterson Emerald
ESPN.com selected senior guard Freddie Jones (20) to the preseason AII-Pac-10 Team.
UO tennis wins
own tournament
■ In its host tournament, the Oregon tennis team
finished with 16 wins against good competition
By Peter Martini
for the Emerald
The Oregon men’s tennis team ended its fall season by win
ning the most matches at the Duck Invitational last weekend.
The Ducks won 16 matches (14 singles, two doubles) to
beat out Boise State by one.
“We did a great job in this tournament, and we needed to
get this kind of experience under our
belt,” head coach Chris Russell said.
Five of the six Ducks who participated
Sunday contributed singles wins. Junior
Jason Menke finished with four singles
victories to lead Oregon.
“Jason is using his experience right
now to help the team,” Russell said. “He
is showing great leadership. ”
Sophomores Chris King and Greg Dubourdieu won three
and two matches, respectively, for the Ducks.
Oregon’s freshmen also contributed heavily to the team
success. Kyle Halberg won two singles matches and Johan
Paalberg won three — two on the first day.
“Our younger guys did especially well,” Russell said.
“They are applying the skills that we are teaching in prac
tice, and they are getting the results.”
One area of concern for Russell following the tourna
ment was their play in doubles matches.
“We didn’t play very well in our doubles matches, and
we need to work on that,” Russell said. “Teamwork will be
so important when we start up the regular season. ”
The doubles teams of Menke and Martin Pawlowski, and
Halberg and Dubourdieu were the only doubles teams to
win for the Ducks.
The schools participating in the tournament include
Portland, Portland State, Texas A&M, Boise State and Ne
braska.
“The level of competition in this tournament was pretty
high,” Russell said. “Portland and Boise State had some
guys ranked nationally in the top 100.”
Russell said the team still needs to step it up a notch be
fore the Pacific-10 season opens in February.
“We played Martin against some of the tougher players in
this tournament so he could get the experience he’ll need
before our Pac-10 matches,” Russell said. “Right now he
has the physical talents to compete, but needs to get men
tally tougher.”
The Ducks will break from team practice in a couple of
weeks for the upcoming winter vacation. Oregon gets back
to the court against Northern Arizona on Jan. 25.
Peter Martini is a freelance reporter for the Oregon Daily Emerald
Three Northwest teams at helm
of wacky Pac-10 Conference
■ The eighth-ranked Huskies have
kept winning and find themselves
alongside Oregon and Washington
State on top of the standings
By Jeff Smith
Oregon Daily Emerald
Oregon’s got it.
Nope, the Ducks lost to Stanford, so
it’s all UCLA.
Wait, with that Bruins loss, Washing
ton State really has a shot at this.
Not so fast, the Ducks beat the
Cougars, so Stanford controls its own
destiny.
And back to Oregon.
So goes the story of the weekly fa
vorite in the ever-changing and oh-so
tight Pacific-10 Conference race for the
Fiesta Bowl in Tempe, Ariz.
But there’s one team that has been
rolling right along week after week, vic
tory after victory, practically unnoticed.
That would be the eighth-ranked
Washington Huskies. With their win
over Stanford on Saturday, the Huskies
remained in the thick of things. As it
stands now, Oregon, Washington and
Washington State are all knotted up at
the top of the Pac-10 with 5-1 league
records.
The Ducks hold the tiebreaker advan
tage over both teams and control their
own destiny, but the Huskies still have a
strong shot at winning the league. Wash
ington wins the conference crown if it
beats Oregon State this week in Corval
lis and Washington State at home on
Nov. 17, and, of course, it needs the
Ducks to lose once.
“We like our position,” Washington
head coach Rick Neuheisel said. “I
don’t know what is going on else
where, but we’ve still got a chance, and
that is all I can ask for in the month of
November.”
Turn to Pac-10, page 6
Late surge gives Smith first victory
■The Duck women pulled out a win in their
first exhibition game, but it wasn’t pretty
By Adam Jude
Oregon Daily Emerald
There is a reason they’re called exhibition
games, and the Oregon women’s basketball
team showed why Friday at McArthur Court.
The Ducks looked out of sync at times, and
even head coach Bev Smith called the perform
ance “ugly,” but a 10-2 run in the final two min
utes proved enough to defeat KSC Szekszard, a
Hungarian traveling team, 83-77.
“It was a little of what we expected,” Smith
said after her Oregon coaching debut. “We
knew we were going to make some mistakes,
but what we expected was 100 percent effort.
And we didn’t always get that.
“But I think our character came out at the end.”
After sitting out last season with a knee in
jury, junior guard Shaquala Williams made her
return with a game-high 22 points, despite
shooting just l-of-10 from three-point land.
“Our defense was just terrible tonight,”
Williams said. “We can’t play like that if we
want to be competitive. With a lot of new peo
pie playing together, we are just going to have to
gel a little more.”
Sophomore Cathrine Kraayeveld scored eight
of her 16 points in the final 84 seconds to secure
the win for the Ducks. Senior forward Alyssa
Fredrick also chipped in 16 points and six re
bounds.
One of six freshmen on the squad, Amy Par
rish, a 6-foot-2 forward, showed great potential
with 11 points and six rebounds in 15 minutes.
As a team, the Ducks said they are nowhere
near they want to be.
“We have a long way to go,” Williams said.
“From where we want to be, we’re only about
50 percent (there).”
Even at 50 percent, though, senior guard
Jamie Craighead — the new face plastered on
the outside of Mac Court — said she’s “not too
worried” about the rest of the season.
The Ducks have their final warm-up Thurs
day against Western Oregon at 7 p.m. before
hosting Wisconsin-Green Bay in the season
opener Nov. 17.
For complete coverage of Oregon women’s basketball,
check www.dailyemerald.com. Adam Jude is the sports
editor for the Oregon Daily Emerald. He can be reached at
adamjude@dailyemerald.com.