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• Former Gonzaga coach Dan Fitzgerald had a four-word mantra he used to use all the time. Play hard. Play smart. The Ducks did both better Thursday night. They played like the team that still had a chance to win the Pac-10 title and play in the NCAA tournament. They played like a team coming off a confidence-building win. They played like a team that expected to win. And they did. Yes, the Cougars couldn't put a pea in the ocean as my dad used to say, but even if they had shot OK, the Ducks might have won this one. Though pretty much even in the size department, Oregon won the rebound battle 39-30 and raced around for six offensive rebounds in the first four minutes. And that might have been when the game was decided. At the very least the tone was set. One team was going to play really hard and give it their best shot and the other team, well, it wasn't matching that effort. After Ken Bone got out of the zone, the Cougars played harder for a while, even pulling within five points. But then they went ice cold for 10 minutes and that killed them. A spate of free throws helped them get within nine with possession late in the half, but Klay Thompson couldn't get a good look from 3 to go down and Tyrone Nared scored on a DeAngelo Casto goaltend. Reggie Moore hit one of two free throws to close out the half, but the 10-point deficit was as close as WSU would get the rest of the way. ... Now the Cougars have another one of those must-win games Saturday night in Corvallis. How they respond will set the tone for the rest of the season.

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Here's the rough draft of our story ...

EUGENE, Ore. – After last Sunday night's win over then-18th-ranked Washington, some Washington State Cougars talked of running the table in the Pac-10's second half.

That thought lasted about four minutes – and four missed shots – Thursday night in Oregon's new Matthew Knight Arena.

As the Cougars misses mounted, the Ducks, a team that competed but still lost by 14 in Pullman four weeks ago, pulled away and routed WSU 69-43 before 10,017.

A hangover from the 87-80 win over the Huskies, who also lost Thursday up the road in Corvallis?

"I don't know," said WSU coach Ken Bone. "Could be."

But Bone was certain of one thing.

"I know this," he said. "I don't think I had our guys ready to go from the beginning. There is no excuse to come out and play as lethargic as we did. We were not good on either end of the floor."

Not good on the defensive end, but horrendous on the other.

The Ducks, who came in last in the Pac-10 in shooting percentage, shot a misleading 42.9 from the floor.

Misleading because they missed 9 of their last 10 shots after building a 29-point lead with 9:45 left. Up to that point they had hit half their 46 shots.

They also were successful on nine 3-pointers – including the sixth and seventh of the year by 6-foot-6 post Joevan Catron, who hardly played in Pullman due to injury – and pulled down 10 offensive rebounds, six in the first 4 minutes Bone lamented.

WSU was struggling so mightly, Bone pulled them out of the zone they played so well against UW.

"We were losing guys in the zone," said Bone of the early stretch, "and they were scoring at a high rate."

"They played with a lot of confidence and a lot of that was due to our lack of defense early in the game," said Abe Lodwick, the only Cougar to shoot as well as 50 percent, making the only shot he took. "It's easy to get your confidence up when all your shots are going in, and your getting the rebounds on the ones that don't go in.

"They just built off it."

Catron built a productive night for the Ducks (4-6 in conference after winning three of their last four, and 11-11 overall) with 17 points, nine rebounds and three assists, while guard Jay-R Strowbridge came off the bench and chipped in 15 points.

But 69 points isn't an impressive offensive performance – unless it's compared to WSU's season-low 43.

WSU, which fell to 5-5 in Pac-10 play and 15-7 overall, hit 5 of its first 13 shots, the last of those a two-hand flush by Klay Thompson after a steal with 11:54 before halftime. The slam hushed the crowd and cut Oregon's lead to 17-12.

But when WSU left Oregon's tie-dyed-looking, fir-designed floor for halftime, it had made one more shot. The Ducks, who put together a 10-0 run after Thompson's dunk, led 33-23 going into intermission.

The 6-for-28 first-half shooting was the Cougars worst of the season.

And then it got really bad.

Coming out of halftime, the Cougars turned the ball over on their first two possessions, missed six of their first seven shots – they were 6 of 32 (18.8 percent) from the floor at one point – and watched as the Ducks outscored them 18-2 in the first 7 minutes.

Running the table was off.

"We started the second half just like the first," Bone said. "We just didn't play with the energy we needed to compete with a team like Oregon."

The individual totals tell the tale.

Thompson was 4 of 13, 2 of 8 from 3 for a team-high 12 points. Reggie Moore was 2 of 8, Faisal Aden 2 of 10, DeAngelo Casto 1 of 5, Marcus Capers 3 of 7 and Patrick Simon missed his five shots.

The 25.9 percent WSU shot – the Cougars came in third in the Pac-10, shooting 47.7 percent – was not only a season low, it was a season-low by more than 10 percentage points. Their 4 of 25 from beyond the arc – 16 percent – was also a season low.

"We didn't shoot the ball well tonight at all," Bone said. "We had some decent looks, but they did a good job defensively."

"I think our defense was pretty good tonight," Catron said. "We were rotating and helping each other out. And it also helped that they missed shots."

Shots they made just five days ago. Which begs the question whether the Cougars got caught looking back.

"I would hate to call it that," Lodwick said. "I would hope we would be better than that. But our play doesn't allow us to say anything differently."

Despite the defeat, Lodwick wasn't going to give up the hope of still winning a Pac-10 title, in spite of falling three games behind league-leading Arizona (8-2 after a 78-69 win at Stanford) with eight games left.

"Can't rule anything out," Lodwick said. "Crazier things have happened.

"We just have to play our games, control the things we can control. Some of it is out of our control now, which is too bad."

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• That's all for now. We'll be back in the morning. Until then ...