Oregon clinches Pac-12 title with 80-67 over Oregon State

Updated: Mar 8, 2021, 04:38 am

CORVALLIS, Ore. -- — Will Richardson scored a career-high 22 points and Oregon made a season-high 15 3-pointers in beating Oregon State 80-67 on Sunday night to finish as the Pac-12 Conference's regular season champion for the second straight year.

Oregon has won five straight in just a span of 11 days and is 10-2 since Feb. 4.

Richardson finished with career-high six-made 3s and only missed once from beyond the arc. As a team, it was the most made 3s by a Ducks unit since 2017 when they went 11 for 24. Oregon finished 15-for-23 (65.2%) from deep.

“You know the guys have been through a lot, but they really came together,” Oregon coach Dana Altman said. “I thought we were really connected that first half. Second half, we gave up too many baskets, but I really thought our energy level was good, our ball movement was good. We finished it off with some good 3s. But, really, really good effort, even on the boards.”

Eugene Omoruyi scored 18 points for Oregon, Eric Williams Jr. 14 and Chris Duarte and LJ Figueroa each scored 10.

Oregon (19-5, 14-4) built a 26-10 lead and never trailed. They led by double figures for most of the remainder.

Ethan Thompson scored 16 points for Oregon State (14-12, 10-10), Warith Alatishe 14, Jarod Lucas 12 and Roman Silva 10.

“We got off to a slow start offensively. The whole objective was to pound it inside, and I think once they got a little bit of a lead, we thought we were going to just shoot our way back into it, rather than staying on plan. It's just a little bit of our experience and immaturity,” Beavers coach Wayne Tinkle said.

Oregon State faces UCLA on Thursday in the post-season conference tournament in Las Vegas.

Oregon is the tournament's top seed. On Thursday it will face the winner of Wednesday's matchup between Arizona State and Washington State.

------

For more AP college basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://twitter.com/AP--Top25