Scouting report: No. 5 Arizona Wildcats vs. Oregon Ducks

Probable starters

OREGON

G Will Richardson (6-5 senior)

G Jermaine Couisnard (6-4 senior)

F Rivaldo Soares (6-5 senior)

F Nate Bittle (7-0 senior)

C N’Faly Dante (6-11 senior)

ARIZONA

G Kerr Kriisa (6-3 junior)

G Courtney Ramey (6-3 senior)

F Cedric Henderson (6-6 senior)

F Azuolas Tubelis (6-11 junior)

C Oumar Ballo (7-0 junior)

How they match up

The last time: Arizona suffered its most lopsided loss of the season, 87-68, on Jan. 14 in Eugene. The Ducks held the Wildcats to just 37.5% shooting, outrebounded them 42-32 and scored 19 points off 16 Arizona turnovers. Azuolas Tubelis had 14 points and six rebounds but hit just 5 of 13 shots, while guard Kerr Kriisa was 2 of 9 from 3-point range. Guard Jermaine Couisnard led Oregon in scoring with 27 points on 9-for-14 shooting, while center N’Faly Dante had 22 points and 10 rebounds.

Last time at McKale Center: The Wildcats snapped a seven-game losing streak to the Ducks with a tense 84-81 victory on Feb. 19, 2022. Arizona shot 53.4% from the field and stopped two late Oregon possessions to hold on for the victory thanks to defense from center Christian Koloko on guards Jacob Young and Will Richardson. Bennedict Mathurin led the Wildcats with 24 points, seven rebounds and five assists.

Series history: Arizona has lost eight of the past nine games with Oregon, including three of the past four at McKale Center. The Wildcats lead the all-time series 52-37.

What’s new with the Ducks: Since beating Arizona and getting their roster fully healthy, the Ducks have continued making a late push to get in the Pac-12 race and NCAA Tournament conversation, winning three of their last four games. With improving offensive efficiency, Oregon won at Cal but lost at Stanford while sweeping Colorado and Utah last week in Eugene to pull into a loss-column tie with Utah for fourth place. Oregon is No. 58 in the NET ratings and 56 in Kenpom, suggesting the Ducks are already near the NCAA Tournament bubble.

Saddled with injuries earlier this season, the Ducks have continued to mesh players back in, though they also were without Dante against Colorado because of a knee injury and played him off the bench against Utah. Couisnard made a notable splash against Arizona in what was only his fourth game and first start for the Ducks; he’s averaging 13.3 points per game since then. Center Nate Bittle returned to the starting lineup against Arizona after missing eight games and coming off the bench in his first three games back from a foot injury, giving coach Dana Altman the option of using two bigs together among Dante, Bittle and five-star freshman Kel’el Ware. But Ware’s minutes have been shrinking, and he did not play at all against Utah, when Altman instead went with 6-9 forward Lok Wur, who provided the Ducks with active defense.

At forward, Quincy Guerrier has provided inside and outside scoring while playing both off the bench and in the starting lineup. Guard Will Richardson leads the Pac-12 in minutes played (36.0) in conference games.

He said it

“They're a team that is getting a little desperate because they need to win to make the NCAA Tournament, so they're playing better. It's that time of the year.

"They’ve gone with Couisnard starting. They didn’t play Ware in the last game but had Bittle and Dante as their five-men. That will be interesting because when they played us they played Bittle and Dante together ... so we’ll see what they do with that.

“I think Dante is a really good player. I think he's one of the best bigs in the country when he's healthy. He had a lot of bad luck in his career, and this is probably the first time he’s been six, seven months injury-free. He's a great kid, so he deserves it. And Couisnard is another kid who had to fight through injuries this year, like their whole team. Obviously if they didn't have all those injuries, their record will probably look very different.

"I think we got a little tired (in the last matchup). Sometimes, we didn't finish the possession and maybe they get an offensive rebound so they scored at the end of the clock. You miss some layups that could be two points for you, and they're gonna transition that into two points for them. That's a four-point swing.

"And probably four or five times in the game we had a couple of turnovers. So that’s the focus for us, to take care of the things we can control — our rebounding, our finishes, and that kind of stuff. And then they also made a 3 from half-court off a lob pass, so obviously it was a good day for them.”

“We know this is gonna be a big challenge. Obviously, they beat us there, and not many teams beat us as bad as they did. So we’ve gotta find that answer responding. Last year, we had some bad losses and we bounced back, so we’ve got to do the same.”

— UA assistant coach Riccardo Fois, who scouted the Ducks

Key players

OREGON — Jermaine Couisnard

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Considering his track record as a starter for most of his three seasons at South Carolina, it wasn’t a surprise that the strong and athletic veteran guard had his Ducks breakout game against Arizona, hurting the Wildcats especially in transition. Couisnard was out until Jan. 5 with a knee injury, then played three games before jumping into the starting lineup to lead Oregon over UA. He hasn’t left the starting lineup since.

ARIZONA — Pelle Larsson

While Arizona has the bigs to offset Dante, Bittle and Ware, Larsson is the guy who might need to help solve the mismatch traps the Ducks might aim for at the forward spots. Also, no Wildcat might want to redeem himself more for UA’s Jan. 14 loss than Larsson, who had just four points and four turnovers to one assist in Eugene.

Sidelines

Quadratic formula

Arizona is 7-2 in Quad 1 games so far, and Oregon is 2-5. The Ducks have two more valuable Quad 1 opportunities this week at UA and ASU.

Meanwhile, the Wildcats are 3-1 in Quad 2 games, including their Jan. 7 home loss to Washington State.

And all this means what, exactly?

During the debut of “A Nameless Podcast” earlier this week, Kriisa and Larsson indicated they didn’t really know ... and weren’t really too worried about it.

“I don’t know,” Kriisa said. “I still don’t understand.”

“I have no idea,” Larsson said.

“I mean, this is more for our Twitter analytics and our experts,” Kriisa said, “the experts who know exactly how games should be played, and stuff like that.”

For what it’s worth, the NCAA defines Quad 1 games are those against home teams ranked 1-25 in the NET and road games against teams 1-75. UA is ranked No. 10 in the NET, ASU is No. 59 and WSU is No. 68.

Ektorp and meatballs, please

For more reasons than one, Swedish wing Larsson can’t get away from the cultural icon that is IKEA.

Also during that podcast, Larsson said it’s “sort of annoying to say you’re from Sweden and (the reaction is) 'Oohhh, IKEA, IKEA."

But Larsson is also a fan of the products that can make him feel a little at home.

“When I was at Utah, I went to IKEA just to eat the food,” said Larsson, who played for the Utes in 2020-21 before transferring to Arizona.

Kriisa couldn’t blame him, finding the store pulled at Larsson in other ways.

“The food is actually amazing — the meatballs and the ice cream — they got some pretty good stuff there,” Kriisa said. “When Pelle moved into his apartment, his third or fourth question was like, You know, I need to put some stuff into my room,’ like a bedframe or whatever he needed. And then he was like `No, no, I want it from IKEA.' "

Time’s running out

While Oregon’s win over Arizona might be its best game of the season, for the Ducks it is also reminder of what might have been.

Ranked No. 21 in the preseason AP Top 25, the Ducks fell out of the poll after losing at home to UC Irvine during the first week of the season. Lately they’ve played more like that ranked team in part because of improved health, but still lost at Stanford on Jan. 21.

Not surprisingly, then, Altman was asked about his team’s consistency during a meeting with reporters on Tuesday in Eugene.

“It goes week to week,” Altman said. “I want them to be more consistent. We've practiced more consistent, so that's a good indicator. We had a good day (Monday) and focus-wise (Tuesday) we didn't go real long, but the activity and the focus was good. So that usually leads to a little bit better consistency.

“But we have to prove it. We have to prove it as a team. Have to prove it as a coaching staff that we're going to be consistent. And if you're not gonna prove it in February, you're about running out of time. We've got nine opportunities here in the regular season, and hopefully a few in the conference tournament, and so we just got to prove it.”

Numbers game

1 — Oregon’s rank among Pac-12 teams in offensive efficiency during conference games, scoring 106.7 points per 100 possessions over 11 league games.

36.1 — Average field-goal percentage of Arizona’s opponents during the Wildcats’ four-game winning streak.

56 — Spots in Kenpom’s defensive efficiency that Arizona has moved up since losing to Oregon. The Wildcats were ranked 31st as of Wednesday, having allowed 95.7 points per 100 opponent possessions. In conference play, UA ranks fourth (97.3).

137 — Games Richardson has played for Oregon, fourth most in school history.