Oregon has been in this position before.
The Ducks needed a win at Utah in order to salvage a road split at the Mountain schools many times as they have never won at Colorado.
Thankfully for their sake, the Ducks managed to make it six wins in their last seven trips to Utah with a 79-73 win in Salt Lake City.
Chris Duarte led Oregon with 25 points as his stock for conference player of the year keeps rising.
Eric Williams, Jr. scored 19 and LJ Figueroa added 15. The Ducks needed some new faces to contribute on the offensive end as Eugene Omoruyi was held scoreless for the first time this season.
With the win, Oregon moved to 9-2 on the year and 4-1 in league play. Utah, which had not played for a week, dropped to 4-4 overall and 1-3 in conference action.
This was definitely a tale of two halves as the Ducks didn’t play their best ball in the first half. Oregon fell behind 43-33 at halftime but turned up the defensive pressure in the second half to quickly erase that deficit.
“I talked to the guys about their lack of competitiveness,” head coach Dana Altman said on that miserable first half. “We don’t win giving up 43 points a half. It was an embarrassing defensive effort. There’s nothing else I could say.”
The halftime speech worked as the defensive effort was like night and day. Utah was forced to turn the ball over 18 times for the game, which the Ducks scored 25 points off of those mistakes.
It took the Ducks just six minutes and some change to turn the 10-point deficit into a one-point lead. For the next 13:30, the two teams went back and forth with the Ducks holding on to a slim lead for most of that duration.
“They did a tremendous job. I thought Amauri Hardy set the tone defensively up front that got us going a little bit. Chris Duarte got some steals that really helped us,” Altman said.
Oregon built up its biggest lead on a Hardy jumper with 3:56 left to go up 67-61. Defense and made free throws helped Oregon preserve its lead until the end.
The Ducks were 13-of-16 from the charity stripe and 10-of-22 from long range which kept Utah at an arm’s length and to avoid a late-game rally from the home team.
Now Oregon comes back home to Matthew Knight Arena for a pair of tough games with Arizona State (Jan. 14) and Arizona (Jan. 16). ASU is 4-5, 1-2 after a 73-63 loss to USC.