Some (but certainly not all) of SC's bigger wins this season came with opponents missing key pieces: @ Stanford (w/o Ziaire, Daejon & Bryce Wills), @ ASU (w/o Remy and Jalen Graham), vs. ASU (w/o Josh Christopher and Marcus Bagley) and vs. UCLA (w/o Cody Riley and Jalen Hill).
There's certainly an argument to be made that Stanford was better -- with Da Silva, Delaire and O'Connell getting more shots -- when SC played them; the same argument could be made about ASU without Josh Christopher -- though not having Marcus Bagley was not a plus. In the case of UCLA, Etienne actually played better defense against Evan than I'd expected to see from Cody Riley, if not Jalen Hill.
But, there are doubts and asterisks in each of those cases.
There can't be any doubts about last night. Oregon was at the healthiest it had been all season -- not fully back with Will Richardson, Chris Duarte and even Eric Williams (who led the Ducks in scoring along with LJ Figueroa). True, Oregon has lost N'Faly Dante for the season, but early HS grad Franck Kepnang (who will eventually be a monster) has outperformed what Dante was doing.
There's certainly an argument to be made that Stanford was better -- with Da Silva, Delaire and O'Connell getting more shots -- when SC played them; the same argument could be made about ASU without Josh Christopher -- though not having Marcus Bagley was not a plus. In the case of UCLA, Etienne actually played better defense against Evan than I'd expected to see from Cody Riley, if not Jalen Hill.
But, there are doubts and asterisks in each of those cases.
There can't be any doubts about last night. Oregon was at the healthiest it had been all season -- not fully back with Will Richardson, Chris Duarte and even Eric Williams (who led the Ducks in scoring along with LJ Figueroa). True, Oregon has lost N'Faly Dante for the season, but early HS grad Franck Kepnang (who will eventually be a monster) has outperformed what Dante was doing.
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