University of Oregon Athletics
03/08/25 | Men’s Basketball
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UW men have no answer for Oregon’s Nate Bittle in overtime loss
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Oregon Finally Puts Huskies Out of Their Misery with OT Defeat
This University of Washington basketball team wasn’t going to shoot noticeably better. Play defense for long. Find a second gear when things got real tough.
So on Sunday, the Huskies’ first season under Danny Sprinkle came to a merciful end as none of that happened, with these guys taking an 80-73 overtime defeat to Oregon before a near capacity crowd at Alaska Airlines Arena.
While Senior Day provided a festive atmosphere, in the end it did nothing to solve any of these lingering issues as the Ducks (23-8 overall, 12-8 Big Ten) proved to be everything the UW wanted to be — confident, accurate and postseason bound.
The Huskies (13-18, 4-16) settled into last place in conference standings, at least two games behind everyone else, as they said good bye to Great Osobor, Franck Kepnang, DJ Davis and Wilhelm Breidenbach, though they likely will welcome the 6-foot-11 and oft-injured Kepnang back with a medical redshirt to use.
Oregon, led by Nate Bittle’s career- and game-best 36 points, scored the first five points of the extra session and held off the UW, which was topped by Osobor’s farewell outing 21 before he fouled out with 1:03 left in OT.
With a new coach in Sprinkle and a reining Mountain West MVP in Osobor, this Husky team opened the season with great optimism and a 10-4 record. It closed things out with six consecutive losses.
This simply wasn’t a good mix of players much of the season, with guard play noticeably lacking against Oregon outside of freshman Zoom Diallo, who played his usual hard-charging game with the occasional miscue. He had all 13 of his points in the opening half.
The Huskies were tied at 2 and 4 before quickly falling behind when Bittle, the Ducks’ 7-foot senior center and an Oregon product from Central Point near Medford gathered in a lob pass over Kepnang, his former teammate, and got his career outing going.
On this day, Bittle kept the UW extremely brittle on defense.
He scored 21 of his points in the half, dunking, laying the ball in and even dropping in a 3-pointer while letting it fly from in front of the Huskies’ bench.
Coming in, Bittle’s previous career best was 23 points against Wisconsin and Oregon State earlier this season. He had a double-double with a game-high 12 rebounds.
Barely four minutes had been played when the Ducks went up by 10, at 16-6 on Bittle’s uncontested lay-in, that is it was until he got fouled by Tyler Harris as he scored.
To their credit, the Huskies played like it was their last game of the season by pushing Oregon all the way to the end.
In the first half, they even pulled within two a couple of times, including late at 34-32 when Osobor dropped in a pair of free throws with 1:42 on the clock.
On the next possession, however, Bittle bumped hard into Osobor, knocking him out of the way without drawing a foul, and dropped in a lay-in to put the Ducks back up by two scores.
Oregon was on top 36-33 at intermission, with Bittle missing a baseline jumper at the buzzer, unguarded of course.
The Huskies really made the Ducks work for it, they just didn’t get a payoff .
Throughout the second half, the home team kept the pressure and took its first lead of the game at 49-48 with 12:36 left to play when Tyler Harris dropped in a 3-pointer just to the left of the key.
That brought the fans out of their seats loudly cheering and applauding and it forced Oregon to call a timeout and regroup.
Rightly so, Bittle put the Ducks back on top, first with another path-clearing lay-in at 50-49 and then with a 3-pointer for a 53-51 edge, putting him over the 30 barrier in scoring for the first time in his career.
As the game went down to the wire, the Huskies went up 67-66 on Osobor’s hard driving move to the basket with 1:37 left and they would have their chances to close it out.
Bittle, of all people, answered Harris by tipping in his own miss with 1:06 remaining for a 68-67 Oregon lead.
With 48.1 seconds to go, Osobor hit one of two free throws to tie the game at 68, then missed a close-in shot near the buzzer and these teams went into overtime.
Kwame Evans’ two free throws — after missing a pair with 27.2 seconds remaining in regulation that could have won this one right then — put the Ducks ahead for good 18 seconds into the extra session.
All that was left was Oregon to begin packing for the Big Ten Tournament, which begins on Wednesday in Indianapolis.
For the latest UW football and basketball news, go to si.com/college/washington
Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he’s covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he’s been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.
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