Oregon Basketball: Ducks Split Games At Madison Square Garden

Oregon Basketball struggled in their first true road game of the season against Iowa on Wednesday but bounced back against a ranked Syracuse team.

For Head Coach Dana Altman and the Oregon Ducks, I expect a few games like the one Wednesday night. First, the team played later than expected, by about an hour and they were on the East Coast. I’m not sure it was worthy of the 24 personal fouls committed by the Ducks in the loss to Iowa, but the Hawkeyes did what they have done the first two games of the season, shot the lights out of the building from the free throw line.

Iowa was 29 for 33 from the charity stripe for the game. While Oregon worked to find their footing for most of the game, the Ducks struggled. Both teams hit about the same from the floor – around 35 percent, but poor free throw shooting gave the Hawkeyes the win. The highlight for Oregon was the play of Ehab Amin who had 25 points. He was 7 of 16 from the floor and 8 of 9 from three-point range.

The following night against Syracuse, Oregon was better prepared and played more like the team Dana Altman envisioned this season should play. Bol Bol had 26 points and several highlight-worthy plays at the rim. Speaking of highlights, Kenny Wooten put a close on the trip to New York with a one-handed slam in an 80-65 win over Syracuse. Following the game, Syracuse Head Coach Jim Boeheim commented that Oregon was hard to score on.

Payton Pritchard had 18 points in 36 minutes. Will Richardson saw his minutes increase to 26 for the game. He finished the game with 7 points. Oregon hit 7 for 20 from long range and pulled down a healthy 24 defensive rebounds.

Oregon returns home at 3-1 to wrap up play in the 2K Empire Classic hosting Green Bay on Tuesday at 7 pm Pacific Time from Matthew Knight Arena.