Oregon guards punch out Cinderella

The Oregon Ducks knew what was coming their way.

The Eagles of Winthrop, an 11th-seeded team on a 19-game winning streak, with the potential to do serious damage, stood in their way of one more day of dancing.

Winthrop (29-5) was the team that the nation was relying on to be this year’s Cinderella story – even though Oregon coach Ernie Kent consistently refuted the glass-slipper theory – and the Eagles were the lowest remaining and only double-digit seed left in this year’s NCAA tournament.

But when the Ducks (28-7) took the floor in second-round action Sunday afternoon, it was Aaron Brooks and Tajuan Porter that answered the call of duty.

The mission: stop Cinderella dead in her tracks – which is what they did.

Oregon’s one-two guard punch, Brooks and Porter, hit a combined 9 of 17 shots from beyond the arc and Brooks led all players with 22 points as Oregon squashed Sweet Sixteen hopeful Winthrop with a 75-61 win at the Arena.

“They were a basketball team that we heard was Cinderella,” Kent said of the Eagles. “We didn’t feel that. We thought that they were a great team and they certainly brought out our A-game because it got our attention just how well they had been playing coming into this tournament.”

For the first time since 1995, no double-digit seeds remain in the tournament.

And for the first time since 2002, Kent’s Ducks are in the round of 16. They will head to St. Louis to take on seventh-seeded UNLV, which took down second-seeded Wisconsin, in a Midwest Regional semifinal.

Oregon’s game largely improved from its first-round matchup with Miami (Ohio), where they grinded out a 58-56 win. It took until about midway through the first half for the Ducks to find their flow, but once they did, there was no turning back.

Down 27-23 with 5:44 remaining in the opening half, the Ducks got a timely 3-pointer from Bryce Taylor and took the lead two minutes later on a long 3 from Brooks.

Malik Hairston padded the lead with a layin and Maarty Leunen dunked with less than a minute remaining as the Ducks took a 33-29 lead at the half.

Porter, who had three points in the first half and finished with 14, nailed three straight 3-pointers at the start of the second half and pushed Oregon to a double-digit lead at 41-31.

“I tried to take good shots and give my team energy from the start (of the second half),” said Porter, a 5-foot-6 freshman. “I felt we started off a little flat, so I just brought a different kind of energy to the team in the second half.”

Senior guard Torrell Martin tried to spark some offense for the Eagles, crashing the boards on offense and trading buckets with the Ducks to keep Winthrop within 10. Martin notched the only double-double of the game, leading Winthrop with 15 points and 12 rebounds.

But the Eagles struggled to convert. Overall, they were 8 of 31 from 3-point range and Oregon continued to pull away.

“It was one of those games where they made their shots and we didn’t make our shots,” Martin, who was 2 for 11 from 3-point range, said. “A lot of my shots were open and a lot of them were mismatches and shots I normally knock down … ultimately their shots went in and ours didn’t and that was the difference in the ball game.”

Specifically, the Ducks made 48 percent of the shots they took from the field. And they were just as good on defense.

Junior center Leunen, who scored 12 points, and junior forward Hairston, 13 points, limited 6-foot-10 Winthrop center Craig Bradshaw, holding him to 10 points.

“Maarty had Bradshaw at times, Malik had him at times, Aaron had him on three possessions,” Kent said. “I thought Maarty was great at that end of the floor. Offensively he started a little slow, but that’s because the ball just didn’t come to him initially.”

Third-seeded Oregon’s next move will be to figure out a strategy against UNLV.

“We’ve got to be ready to play because they deserve to be there,” Brooks said. “We’re just going to come out and I think we’ll go over film and get a better understanding of them … then we’ll be fine.”