Pac 10 Fans Home
Pac 10 Football
Pac 10 Basketball
Pac 10 Baseball
College Fansites
Pac 10 Apparel
Pac 10 Tickets

Wildcats top Ducks: 67-52

Chase Budinger busted out of his shooting slump with a series of highlight-reel plays, leading the Arizona Wildcats to a 67-52 victory Thursday night over visiting Oregon.

Budinger, the Wildcats’ standout junior who had made just 8 of 27 shots in a pair of UA losses last weekend at California and Stanford, converted 8 of his 15 field-goal attempts Thursday at McKale Center on the way to a game-high 20 points. His repertoire against the Oregon Ducks included baseline drives, ferocious dunks and a creative play in which he bounced an inbounds pass off an opponent and back to himself for an uncontested layup.

“I’ve been waiting for this,” Budinger said about the opportunity to inbound the ball off an unsuspecting player from the opposing team. “Every game, I’m just waiting for the guy to turn around; it finally happened. I was like, ‘Yeah, easy bucket.’ Threw it right off his butt.”

Budinger’s ingenuity gave the Wildcats a 6-4 lead with 17:07 left in the first half. Also during the opening 20 minutes, Budinger successfully drove the baseline on three occasions, scoring on a running jumper, a reverse layup and a slam dunk as Arizona built a 30-19 halftime advantage.

Budinger would add 12 more points in the second half, when he hit three free throws, another reverse layup, a three-pointer and a pair of dunks.

“I was able to make my cuts, and my teammates were able to find me,” Budinger said. “I was able to play around the rim more tonight and get easy dunks, easy layups.”

Budinger and point guard Nic Wise combined for an electrifying fast-break basket with eight minutes remaining in the second half. Wise, who finished the game with seven points and five assists, fired an approximately 60-foot pass to the sprinting Budinger, who drove to the hoop and threw down a behind-the-back, two-handed slam.

“I want to do something else on a dunk and my legs aren’t feeling it, so I just went to the old reverse,” Budinger said about the play, which increased the Wildcats’ lead to 49-35.

Arizona interim head coach Russ Pennell has maintained throughout Budinger’s recent shooting slump that it was only a matter of time before the 6-foot-7 forward would start knocking them down again. With his 8-for-15 display of marksmanship on Thursday, Budinger is now shooting 46.4 percent from the field for the season and is averaging 16.9 points per game.

“And, you know, 8-for-15, he’s even better than that, but that’s a big step forward,” Pennell said. “He ought to feel good about himself, and I think our team was really happy for him.”

The victory over Oregon was much-needed for the Wildcats, who improved to 1-2 in the Pac-10 and escaped the conference basement.

“I was extremely happy with our effort tonight,” Pennell said about the Wildcats, who stand at 10-5 overall heading into a Saturday afternoon home contest against Oregon State. “I thought we played really hard. We accomplished one of our major goals for this game, which is to bounce back with our effort after the Stanford game (a 76-60 loss last Sunday).”

Sophomore forward Jamelle Horne went 5-for-5 from the field and scored 15 points for the Wildcats, who also got nine points and 12 rebounds from junior forward/center Jordan Hill and nine points from sophomore guard Zane Johnson.

> Browse the selection of Pac 10 apparel & merchandise online as well as Pac 10 tickets through Pac 10 Fans and partner sites.

Defensively, the Wildcats held Tajuan Porter, who is Oregon’s leading scorer this season with an average of 14.1 points per game, to just two points on 1-of-7 shooting.

“Every place he was, we tried to be there,” Pennell said about his team’s defensive effort against Porter, a 5-6 junior guard. “First half, when they were in front of us, we had our whole bench just yelling, ‘Shooter through, shooter through, 12’s on your side.’ We just kept going with letting everyone know where he was. And I thought we did a really good job of communicating in the zone. In the second half I saw guys pointing, talking. And that’s so important when there is a shooter because those guys move. When they move you can lose track of them unless there is good communication.”

Freshman center Michael Dunigan and freshman guard Matthew Humphrey led Oregon (6-9, 0-3) with nine points each.

By Tom Kessler
DFN Sports Staff Writer