Love's 29 lead Arizona to 87-83 win over Oregon

SEATTLE, WASHINGTON - MARCH 23: Caleb Love #1 of the Arizona Wildcats drives to the basket against Nate Bittle #32 of the Oregon Ducks during the second half in the second round of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at Climate Pledge Arena on March (Steph Chambers / Getty Images)

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SEATTLE - Caleb Love scored 20 of his 29 points in the second half with two final free throws with two seconds left as the Arizona Wildcats advanced to the Sweet 16 with an 87-83 victory over former Pac-12 rivals the Oregon Ducks on Sunday night.

Jackson Shelstad made a layup with 10 seconds left that cut the Arizona lead to one, 81-80. But needing three points to tie, the Wildcats elected to keep fouling to send Oregon to the free throw line. Meanwhile, Anthony Dell'orso and Love kept converting at the foul line to keep the game out of reach.

An intentionally missed free throw from Shelstad was corralled by the Wildcats with two seconds left and Love converted his foul shots to push the lead to four and out of reach.

"Super satisfying," Love said. "Just knowing that this group, what we went through, the adversity, it's built us for these moments. Us going down early, we never panicked, we never altered anything. I just think we were so poised throughout that whole game, and nobody was worried about anything but finishing out the game and winning the game."

Oregon jumped all over the Wildcats in the opening minutes. An 11-0 run over a three-minute stretch gave the Ducks a comfortable 19-4 advantage just over five minutes into the game.

But the Wildcats slowly found their footing and clawed back into the contest. It took almost exactly 10 minutes of game time for Arizona to erase the entire Oregon lead. An 18-5 stretch capped by a Jaden Bradley basket gave Arizona their first lead, 32-31, with 4:48 left in the half.

"I knew there was so much time in the game and so many possessions, you just didn't want to dig a deeper hole," Arizona head coach Tommy Lloyd said. "I felt like if we cut it to nine, then seven – I mean, I've been in so many of those games where I've been on the other end of 'em. You almost feel like it's inevitable that a good team's going to come back on you.

"So I wanted them to feel that, and I wanted our guys just to hang with it."

The Wildcats' lead grew to as much as six, but settled at 42-38 at the break behind Bradley's 11 first-half points. After the rapid start from the Ducks, Arizona outscored Oregon by a 38-19 margin over the final 15 minutes of the half.

The Arizona advantage grew to as much as 11 points four minutes into the second half, but the Ducks slowly started to chip away at the lead.

"When we got on that run in the first half, they started crashing the boards," Bittle said. "We were up and then it flipped pretty quickly there on the rebounds. They got a couple offensive rebound put-backs and stuff and started attacking us. We weren't building our wall, getting back in transition defense. They got some transition buckets.

"Then in the second half, we came out and made a run and it was just going back and forth. We just had to get stops in that moment and we weren't able to."

Shelstad, Nate Bittle and TJ Bamba carried the effort for Oregon with 33 of the team's 45 points in the second half. An 8-3 run trimmed the lead to 68-65 with 7:38 left to play.

After the Arizona lead had grown to as much as seven, Kwame Evans Jr. missed an open 3-pointer from the left corner with 3:53 left, and Bamba airballed a 3-pointer with three minutes left as the Ducks had the chance to make it a one-possession game again. Instead, Love delivered an emphatic one-handed dunk on the opposite end after blowing by Bittle at the top of the key to stretch the Wildcats' lead back to seven.

Bamba answered back with a hard-driving finish through contact that drew a foul and a three-point play. Love drained another 3 with 2:01 left to make it a seven-point game yet again at 80-73.

After winning an out-of-bounds review, Bamba threw the ball away to spark an Arizona fastbreak, but KJ Lewis couldn't finish the alley-oop pass and Keeshawn Barthelemy drained a 3-pointer from the right wing to cut the lead to four. Bittle's hook shot from inside the lane made it a two-point game, 80-78, with 49.2 left.

"I've also just thought the best way to close games is make the right basketball play," Lloyd said. "Speaking of closing, I guess we had a three-on-one fast-break where two guys went for the alley-oop and it didn't go in, and my good friend, (Golden State Warriors head coach) Steve Kerr, texted me ‘like, what the hell was up with that three-on-one?’ And I said, ‘yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, coach.’ And he was like, 'well, just so you feel better, Draymond (Green) would have did the same thing and Stef (Stephen Curry) would have pulled up and shot a three.

"I've always felt like at Arizona, my four years, we've lived on the edge of excitement and maybe there's times I wish we had a little bit more conservative approach to things, but I also think that let-it-rip mentality is kind of who we are, and I think it's provided way more positives and way more benefits than negatives for us."

Arizona couldn't get the ball in play and had to call a timeout. Bradley was trapped perfectly on the ensuing inbounds play and turned the ball over to give the ball back to Oregon with 45.5 remaining.

Bamba missed a contested jumper with 32 seconds left as the game turned to the free throw line. Bradley missed one of his two shots to keep it a one-possession game at 81-78 before Shelstad's layup with 10 seconds left.

"We've played in a lot of situations where we've had to come back towards the end of the game, but we usually are good at knocking down our free throws and kind of doing a good job at the line, and tonight we just missed a few, and I think that's kind of how the game ended like that," Shelstad said.

Shelstad led the Ducks with 25 points. Bamba finished with 17 and Bittle added 16 points with 11 rebounds.

"We have played 30-some games and it's the first one this year that we lost at the line," Oregon head coach Dana Altman said. "We've been a good free throw shooting team. We've hit clutch free throws all year, and we went 12-22 with missing a front end. So you know, that hasn't been typical for us.

"We had our opportunities, came out great, but didn't play the way that we needed to play to win the game."

It's the second straight trip to the Sweet 16 for Arizona, who is looking to advance to the Elite Eight for the first time since 2015. No. 1 seed Duke awaits in Newark, N.J. on Thursday.

The Source: Original story by FOX 13 Seattle