Oregon men's basketball shines in season-opening win

Oregon's new coach and unrecognizable men’s basketball roster made a pretty good first impression.The Ducks took it to Montana and looked good doing it, winning their season-opener 87-69 on Nov. 2 in front of an announced crowd of 4,067 at Matthew Knight Arena.Tyrone Riley IV led Oregon with 17 points, Malique Ewin had 14 points and 13 rebounds and five Ducks scored in double figures.“Everybody was eating today,” forward Taylor Bol Bowen said as he glanced over the stats sheet. “I don’t think we saw a lot of bad shots.”The game marked the debut for interim head coach Tony Stubblefield, who took over for Dana Altman when the former coach retired Oct. 7 after 16 years at Oregon.The Ducks also debuted 11 new players – nine transfers and two freshmen – with five of them making their first starts in a regular-season game.Fred Payne opened at point guard and scored 12 with five assists, Riley was at guard, Andrew Meadow was at small forward and scored 14, and Bol Bowen and Ewin were in the post. Collectively that group scored 63 and shot 57.7% from the field (26 for 45).They were among a group that entertained the small crowd with an up-and-down playing style highlighted by dunks, transition baskets and efficient offense.“We have so many different weapons,” Meadow said. “If we can all play together like we showed tonight, we can just keep having different guys have big nights on different nights.”The Ducks shot 60.3% (35 for 58) from the field, dominated inside with 54 points in the paint. They also had 21 assists, and outrebounded the Grizzlies 37-26.Ten players scored for Oregon, including reserve point guard Wei Lin, who had 10 points off the bench.“I keep telling out guys our strength is in numbers, and I think we have a lot of depth on this team,” Stubblefield said. “I think over the course of 40 minutes we can wear a lot of teams out.”How the Oregon Ducks got the victoryMontana started the game 4-for-4 from 3-point range to take a 12-4 lead at the 17:00-minute mark of the first half. But the Ducks settled in and were up 40-31 at halftime.Their lead grew to 15 points – 53-38 – four minutes into the second half before the Grizzlies started chipping away until a 3-pointer by Jordan Clark tied the score 57-57 with 10:41 to play.Clark’s 3 was one of 13 deep shots made by Montana on 30 attempts.The Ducks didn’t get rattled after losing their double-digit advantage. Instead, they responded with a game-closing 30-12 run. Riley scored eight during that stretch and 14 of those points came in transition for the Ducks.“It’s a game of runs over the course of 40 minutes, teams are going to go on runs but I thought our guys were resilient,” Stubblefield said. “I thought they responded very well and then I think we got to their legs a little bit. I think they got a little fatigued over the course of the last eight or nine minutes.”What's next for Oregon men's basketballThe Ducks will play their next three at Matthew Knight Arena, beginning with a 3 p.m. game Friday against Eastern Washington as part of a doubleheader with the Oregon women's team, which plays Washington State at 7 p.m.Both games will be streamed on B1G+.Chris Hansen covers University of Oregon football, men’s basketball, track and field, cross country and softball for The Register-Guard. You can reach him at chansen@registerguard.com.Want to see more Oregon Ducks coverage? Subscribe to The Register-Guard Newsletter.This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Oregon men's basketball shines in season-opening win