Field Level Media
Feb 6, 2019
Guard Payton Pritchard scored 20 points and grabbed a career-high 10 rebounds as Oregon opened the second half of Pacific-12 Conference play with a 73-62 victory against visiting California on Wednesday night in Eugene, Ore.
Louis King added 12 points and Paul White and Kenny Wooten each scored 11 for the Ducks (14-9, 5-5 Pac-12), who avoided a second straight defeat. Oregon had alternated two-game losing streaks and two-game winning streaks since the start of conference play, finally breaking out of that sequence Wednesday.
Justice Sueing led Cal (5-17, 0-10) with 17 points. The Golden Bears suffered their 11th consecutive loss.
Connor Vanover, Cal's 7-foot-3 freshman who was a teammate of Oregon's injured Bol Bol at Findlay Prep in Nevada, scored all 12 of his points in the second half. Teammate Paris Austin also scored 12 points and Matt Bradley scored 10. Sueing, Vanover and Austin each had five rebounds and Austin added five assists.
Oregon's Wooten, playing with a facemask after suffering a broken jaw in a Dec. 21 game against Baylor, was dominant on the defensive end with five rebounds, four blocked shots and two steals. Teammate Will Richardson added eight points and a game-high nine assists.
Pritchard scored nine points in the first half, on three 3-pointers, as the Ducks took a 32-21 lead at intermission.
The Golden Bears led 15-13 with 9:32 left in the half before the Ducks went on a 14-2 run to take the lead for good.
Oregon scored the first five points of the second half to extend the lead to 37-21 before Cal went on a 14-4 run to pull within six. That was the closest the Golden Bears would get in the second half.
Oregon coach Dana Altman got his 634th career victory to move into a tie with Hugh Durham (Florida State, Georgia Jacksonville) and Norm Sloan (Presbyterian, The Citadel, Florida, N.C. State) for 30th place in NCAA Division I history.
--Field Level Media