Jackson Shelstad’s 19 points led Oregon to a 75-57 win over Rutgers on Sunday afternoon in Eugene, Ore.
Shelstad, the Ducks’ leading scorer this season, made three of his team’s season high 13 3-pointers as Oregon (18-8, 7-8 Big Ten) won its second straight game after five consecutive losses.
Center Nate Bittle swished three-ball No. 13 with 4:41 to play, off an offensive rebound from the top of the arc. Bittle had 15 points and 10 rebounds for the Ducks, and T.J. Bamba added 11 with six assists.
Lathan Sommerville’s 14 points led Rutgers (12-14, 5-10) and Dylan Harper added 13. But the Scarlet Knights lost their third straight game and fourth of the past five.
The difference in the game was Oregon’s 3-point shooting, 59.1 percent, to Rutgers’ 21.1 percent. The Ducks also played tough defense against the Scarlet Knights’ star freshman duo of Harper and Ace Bailey, who scored just eight points on 4-of-13 shooting in 29 minutes.
Bailey, Rutgers’ leading scorer going into the game, missed all four of his 3-point tries and was held 11 points under his season per-game average.
Rutgers led by as many as seven in the first half, 21-14, on a Harper jumper with 11:08 to go. But the Ducks turned it around for a five-point lead at halftime, 38-33.
Rutgers got as close as one point down in the second half, then Shelstad got hot. He hit three 3-pointers over a roughly five-minute span, his third one giving Oregon a 62-48 lead with 9:29 to play.
Then, a 7-0 run gave the Ducks a 69-50 lead, which was insurmountable for Rutgers. The Scarlet Knights didn’t make a basket for most of the last three minutes of the game, and Oregon held them to 24 points in the second half after the Ducks had given up 50 second-half points in each of their previous two games.
–Field Level Media