Three takeaways from Oregon's nail-biting double-overtime loss at Colorado

Oregon delivered a miraculous comeback effort Wednesday after appearing dead in the water for the better part of four quarters.

In a game that they desperately needed to win, the No. 25 Ducks came out flat against Colorado in Boulder and found themselves trailing 70-61 with 1:23 left in regulation. At that point, it seemed that the only thing left to be decided was the Buffs’ margin of victory.

But against all odds, Oregon uncorked a 13-2 run to close out the fourth quarter thanks to some tenacious defense, a flurry of big buckets, and a relentless effort.

The Ducks and Buffs traded leads twice in overtime and Endyia Rogers converted a tough layup with 28 seconds to go to tie the game at 80-all and send the game to a second overtime. From there, Oregon fell behind by four early in double-OT and was forced to mount another comeback.

Rogers buried another fastbreak layup with 44 seconds left, and Oregon got the stop it needed at the other end. With four seconds left and the Ducks trailing 84-82, Nyara Sabally was fouled and headed to the line with a chance to tie the game.

But she missed the first free throw, made the second, and Colorado was able to burn the clock on the ensuing inbounds pass and force a late foul that sealed the game.

With the loss, the Ducks fall to 18-10 on the season and 10-6 in Pac-12 play. Here are three takeaways from Wednesday’s shootout at the CU Events Center.

Sluggish start strikes again

There’s been an assumption all season long that, sooner or later, things will start to click for this Oregon team and it will grow out the slow, lethargic starts that have been a frequent hindrance.

Well, there’s one regular-season game left, and it seems as though that issue is part of the fabric of this Duck team.

In a game it absolutely needed to win if it hoped to solidify its spot as one of the top-16 teams in the country, the Ducks came out flat. They missed their first 11 three-pointers and shot just 34.5 percent from the field in the first half. Meanwhile, they gave the Buffs far too many easy looks at the other end and went into halftime trailing 31-24.

In a difficult road environment, against a quality team like Colorado, that simply can’t happen if you hope to win a basketball game.

Oregon is 28 games into its season and seems no closer to solving this issue than it was two months ago.

“I think sometimes we just play like we’ve won something,” Oregon coach Kelly Graves said. “Like we won the championships. Those championships weren’t won by this crew. Nobody on this team was on any of those teams. We can’t just come out and go through the motions. We’ve got to play harder, man.”

Stars shine late

The Ducks needed their best players to carry them Wednesday if they had any hope to come back and win.

In the most pivotal moments, that is precisely what Sabally and Rogers did.

On the same night she notched her 1,000th career point, Rogers finished with a game-high 28 points on 10-of-18 shooting in 44 minutes. Time and time again she buried crucial buckets to keep the Ducks afloat. She calmly drained two free throws on Oregon’s last possession to force overtime and later converted a layup to force double-overtime.

After a difficult start to the game, Sabally came to life for the Ducks late in the fourth quarter and scored seven points in the final 1:23 of regulation. She finished with 22 points, 11 rebounds, three blocks, and a +/- of 10.

It was an incredible late-game performance from Sabally, but if the Ducks are going to reach their ceiling, they are going to need that type of play from her for four quarters.

“I think Nyara’s best defender sometimes is Nyara,” Graves said. “If she wants to play, she’s a really difficult matchup for anybody.”

Wake-up call?

It will be hard for Oregon to find a silver lining after this one. They exerted an incredible amount of effort only to come up agonizingly short.

For a team that was already running on fumes after playing three games per week for a month straight, Wednesday’s marathon at 5,345 feet above sea level isn’t going to help with the recovery process. Sabally, Rogers, and Te-Hina Paopao all played more than 40 minutes.

But down the stretch in the fourth quarter, the Ducks played with a desperation that we haven’t seen from them all season. That urgency came too little, too late, but Wednesday may have served as a sorely-needed reality check.

“I can’t be prouder of the way we fought and came back into that game,” Graves said. “I thought the kids did a great job of managing those last couple of minutes of regulation.”