Arizona vs. Oregon final score: Ducks embarrass Wildcats on national TV

Beat down.

What just happened?

The No. 5 Arizona Wildcats were shot out of the building by the No. 13 Oregon Ducks on Saturday, getting blown out by a score of 85-58. This is just shy of the worst loss by Arizona in the Sean Miller era (BYU 99-69 in 2009-10). Arizona trailed by as much as 37 in this one. Not a great way to follow up that contract extension.

Oregon just couldn’t miss from three in this one. Tyler Dorsey was the ultimate example of this, hitting all six threes that he took, resulting in a game-high 23 points. As a team, the Ducks finished the day 16-of-25 from three, and just 14-of-21 from two.

Arizona’s offense was also very poor. People are going to say that no one beats Oregon when they shoot like that, but no one wins when they shoot like Arizona did. The Wildcats ended up shooting 42% in the game, but were closer to 30% for the majority of the game. They were also just 5-for-17 from three.

Just a bad game that has added to a series of underperforming games for this team. Ever since the win over UCLA, there has not been a solid performance by the Wildcats, which is somewhat concerning.

Arizona and Oregon are now both 10-1 in conference, and do not meet again in the regular season. The Ducks also have the longest home winning streak in the nation now after Kansas’ loss to Iowa State earlier in the day.

Here are a few main themes from this disaster.

Brooks on Sports

For some reason, Lauri Markkanen was guarding Dillon Brooks for the most part. That’s not what should’ve happened.

Brooks went 7-of-10 from the field, and Lauri picked up his third foul early in the second half, resulting in Keanu Pinder taking the floor. Despite early foul trouble, Brooks still poured in 18 points for the Ducks, which was the second-most behind Dorsey’s 23.

Lauri also didn’t get the ball enough on the offensive end. He only took five shots, and missed all three long-distance attempts he took. For the entire road trip, Markkanen only scored 13 points and was 2-of-11 from the field. Not a week that he’ll want to remember.

Be aggressive. B-E aggressive

Arizona isn’t going to win games where it only takes eight free throws. Even when the game was still early and not totally out of hand, the Wildcats were settling for contested threes instead of attacking the zone. This team has to become more aggressive when faced with the zone. There’s no way that a team that plays a little bit of zone on a regular basis doesn’t play it exclusively against UA from here on out.

Same old song and dance in that category if we’re being honest.

Costly turnovers

UA actually won the turnover battle (Arizona 13 - Oregon 14), but it was the points off turnovers that really illustrate how this game played out. The Ducks were able to get 30 points off UA’s mistakes, while the Wildcats only got ten points from Oregon’s turnovers.

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Arizona returns home next week to possibly sort things out. Stanford comes to McKale on Wednesday night at 9 PM MT on Fox Sports 1.

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