Oregon clinches second Pac-12 regular season title since 1945

With its win over USC on Saturday, Oregon clinched its second outright conference championship since 1945.

The Ducks defeated the Trojans 76-66 behind strong performances from Tyler Dorsey and Elgin Cook, who scored 19 and 17 points respectively. The story of this game was a 20-minute power outage in the first half that stopped play with 5:27 left in the first half.

It was Pac-12 after dark in the middle of the afternoon today when a power outage hit the Galen Center #USC #Oregon pic.twitter.com/1vgqyrwbQy

— InsideUSC (@InsideUSC) March 5, 2016

Not even the outage could slow down Oregon’s play though, as the Ducks moved to 25-6 overall and 14-4 in the Pac-12. They won 11 of their last 13 games, with only a brief hiccup in the Bay Area with losses to Stanford and California. This game was pretty indicative of what we’ve seen all season from Oregon. The Ducks just have a variety of ways to beat you on the offensive end. Even if Dillon Brooks doesn’t have things going — and today he did not, only going 1 of 6 from the field and scoring three points — other guys pick it up in his place. All seven of Dana Altman’s regular rotation players are capable offensive weapons, which makes them such a tough team to stop.

The Ducks should feel relatively good about tracking toward a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament, given their lofty standing in the RPI and their now 10-3 mark against the top-50 this season. If they go into Las Vegas and win the Pac-12 Tournament, they might even be able to play their way up to a No. 1 seed if things broke the right way.

Overall, just a terrific season from Altman and company, and it’s not over yet.