Dillon Brooks’s Game Winner Lifts Oregon Past California
The Oregon Ducks’ miraculous comeback was engineered by Dillon Brooks.
Around this time in the college basketball season there are many top 10 teams that are on upset watch, as many teams at the middle or the bottom of the conference are looking for that key, signature win. The California Golden Bears were looking for that when 6th ranked Oregon came into Berkeley.
In the first half, Cal was ready to send Oregon home early as they raced out to a 20-7 lead. Cal would outscore Oregon 10-9 the rest of the way to take a 30-16 lead into the half. The Ducks were frigid from the field shooting 29% from the field including 0-7 from 3pt range. Scoring 16 points in a half is something that seems unlikely for an Oregon team that averages 79 points per game but there were still 20 more minutes to be played and with those 20 minutes. Oregon was destined to make a huge run.
Cal’s lead would grow to as much as 16 early in the second half, but Oregon would later cut that lead to nine with under 14 minutes remaining in the half. The Golden Bears would go back up by 11, but Oregon went on yet another run.
Down 52-43 with eight minutes remaining, Oregon would go on a 12-7 scoring run to cut the Bears’ lead to four. Oregon would cut their lead to one thanks to a three pointer by Payton Pritchard.
The last three minutes of the game would turn out to be a tough battle as both teams went back and forth. Dillon Brooks and Chris Boucher came on strong during this part of the game with their clutch scoring. Boucher gave Oregon it’s first lead of the game when he hit a jumper to give the Ducks a 62-61 edge. Brooks would hit a shot with under a minute remaining to give them a 64-63 lead.
Ivan Rabb would later tie the game at 65 when he scored off of a shot with 10 seconds remaining. Ten seconds was more than enough for Brooks as he was able to hit a step back three point shot with 0.2 seconds remaining to win the game for the Ducks.
It was a comeback for the ages for Oregon, as they outscored Cal 52-35 in the second half. Dillon Brooks led Oregon with 22 points on 9/18 shooting. The Golden Bears were led by Jabari Bird who scored 20 points on 8-13 shooting.
The Ducks are only 0.5 games back of 1st place in the Pac-12 with two games remaining on their schedule. It’s likely that they could share 1st place with Arizona barring a late season collapse. Oregon is still in play for a No. 1 seed in the NCAA tournament.