The Pac-12 has been a tight race all year and any win is a big one. Oregon Basketball has a chance to grab a key road victory at Arizona on Saturday. Here are some keys to a Ducks win.
I wrote last week about how the Pac-12 is a jumbled mess right now with the weeks of the regular season winding down. Not much has changed this week with not much separation between the teams, and perhaps the conference’s biggest game of the week takes place on Saturday when No. 14 Oregon Basketball travels to Tucson to take on the newly-ranked No. 24 Arizona Wildcats.
Oregon (20-7, 9-5) is right on the tail of Colorado who leads the pack by a half-game. The Ducks have rebounded nicely from the back-to-back losses at the hands of Stanford and their in-state rivals from Corvallis by earning a season split with Colorado, knocking off Utah, but are now looking for a split of the Arizona trip, after falling to Arizona State on Thursday.
The Wildcats (19-7,9-4) have lost one game by more than seven points all year, a 65-52 loss to UCLA, but since that loss, Sean Miller’s squad has won three straight, by defeating California, Stanford and Oregon State with relative ease. The team’s other six losses have come by an average of just 3.5 points and the Wildcats have won eight of their last 10 entering the game with Oregon.
With road victories at such a premium this season, a win by Oregon at Arizona would be a big boost to their Pac-12 title hopes and help them keep pace with Colorado and the rest of the teams vying for a conference title. Here are three big keys for Oregon to pick up a huge road victory.