It’s only fitting that the Pac-12 end its tournament with the top two teams in the league standings battling for the title. The Oregon Ducks and Arizona Wildcats finished in a tie for first place with identical 16-2 records and they even have the same overall ledger at 29-4 heading into Saturday night’s title fight. The tie-breaker here is Oregon’s 85-58 thrashing of the Wildcats when the teams met in Eugene in their only regular season matchup.
This war on the floor will go down Saturday, March 11, 2017, at 11 p.m. ET at the T-Mobile Arena. The game will be televised live on ESPN. We'll have NCAA basketball odds at BookMaker.eu available for this and every game on the college basketball Saturday schedule.
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That loss to Oregon seemed to spark the Wildcats, who’ve won eight of their last nine games. The only defeat came to UCLA in the regular season finale, but UA redeemed itself with a convincing win over the Bruins in the semifinal round. Their 86-75 win, coupled with a 92-78 victory over Colorado in the tournament opener has the Wildcats feeling pretty good about their chances on Saturday. Arizona is 3-0 ATS in its last three and 5-2 ATS in its last seven.
The Ducks may have been looking past Cal in the semifinal round and ahead to the final. That would explain the effort in a 73-65 win. It took a late flurry to turn a one-point game into the eventual margin, but the Ducks fell short of covering the spread and are 2-3 ATS in their last five games. Oregon will likely be a slight favorite in this one because of its win earlier in the season, but the spread will be thin.
Last Meeting
The Ducks had one of those games and all Arizona could do was watch in amazement. When the teams played their lone regular season game in Eugene last month, Oregon couldn’t miss. The Ducks shot 65.2 percent from the field and hit 64 percent of their three-point attempts, and that was after they missed their last four triples.
The shooting display was “ridiculous” according to Dillon Brooks, who hit 4 of 7 three-pointers and scored 18 points. But Tyler Dorsey, the one-time Arizona commit, did the most damage. Dorsey was 7 of 9 from the field and made all six of his three-pointers for 23 points. The game got out of hand for Arizona early with Oregon making 10 threes in the first half to build a 20-point lead at the break. And it got worse for UA in the second half. The Ducks continued their deadly shooting in the second half against one of the better three-point shooting defenses in the country.
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Arizona is one of the better teams at defending the three-point shot and the Wildcats will need to be on their game for a second night in a row to capture the Pac-12 crown. UA allows opponents to make just 30.7 percent of their triples and they did a number defending the arc against UCLA in the semifinals. The Bruins entered as a top three-point shooting team but were held to just 4 of 25 from distance, which was a big reason why the Wildcats came out victorious.
That wasn’t the case when these clubs met in Eugene last month. The Ducks were unconscious and riddled the Wildcats defense for 16 threes while hitting 64 percent from long range. Even without being defended it’s unlikely Oregon shoots that well. Throw a hand in the offenders face and it becomes more difficult.
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That first game was for seeding purposes only and doesn’t mean a thing. That’s what the Wildcats will say. Oregon will sing a different tune. Something to the effect of we can score on these guys and have their number. Either way, that’s in the past and the championship game will feature two of the best teams in the country. I certainly don’t see either team winning by 27 points and with Lauri Markkanen knocking down shots, the Wildcats look much tougher.
However, the Ducks are a confident group after that thrashing they laid on the Wildcats earlier and Arizona went all out to beat UCLA over some misguided sense of revenge for Sean Miller. The coach wanted badly to win so he could call a timeout to get back at the Bruins for a similar incident in Tucson. And the Ducks are more athletic defensively than UCLA and it showed in that first game. Give the Ducks the nod in a game that will be close.
College Basketball Odds: Oregon 78, Arizona 76
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