MANHATTAN, Kan. - It was the ultimate compliment.
The last thing Kansas State coach Frank Martin probably wanted to talk about late Thursday night was Oregon sophomore Tajuan Porter, especially with the role the 5-foot-6 jitterbug/point guard played in the 17th-ranked Ducks’ 80-77 overtime victory against the No. 25 Wildcats.
It’s Porter, with his speed and quickness, who makes the Ducks fly. Ask Martin, who could only watch as Porter darted and ducked inside his team’s defense to finish with 14 points and five assists.
Afterward, the K-State coach was blunt in his assessment of the Detroit native’s play.
“He’s a winner,” Martin said.
No question about it. During his freshman year in Eugene, Oregon finished with a 29-8 record, losing in the second round of the NCAA tournament to the eventual champs, Florida. This year, the Ducks are soaring at 6-1, and according to Martin, Porter is the reason.
“They surround him with guys who can shoot,” the K-State coach said. “They ball-screen and he finds open guys. … He’s a perfect example of why we shouldn’t judge people by what they look like.”
At first glance, he doesn’t look like much. And for stretches Thursday at a packed and at times raucous Bramlage Coliseum, his game didn’t either. Porter didn’t score his first points until a pair of free throws around the nine-minute mark of the first half.
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Early in the second half, he drove recklessly to the basket, flinging a wayward shot at the rim and then following up on the next possession with a 23-footer early in the shot clock. He missed, but he quickly settled down. Next time he touched the ball, he found burly sophomore forward Joevan Catron with a beautiful left-handed, no-look dish.
Wide open, Catron converted the layup.
But then Porter reverted back to one-against-five, the littlest guy on the court (and the Pac-10, according to Oregon’s media guide) picking a fight against some of the biggest men in the joint.
For most of the night, he was outplayed by a freshman, K-State’s Jacob Pullen. But as Martin pointed out, Porter’s team won. And it sounds as if it might take more than an off-night to rattle Porter’s confidence.
“I thought I was the man all along,” he said Thursday.
Come again?
“I’m always the man on the basketball court,” he said. “You know, I’m the point guard, and the point guard is the leader on the team. I’ve got to step up and take the responsibility for making big plays for my teammates. But we have three seniors on our team, and they’ve been through a lot. They’ve got a lot of experience, so the pressure is not just on me.”
That pressure was eased last year with the presence of Aaron Brooks, who was the Ducks’ leading scorer (17.7 points) and distributor (4.3 assists) in 2006-07. Brooks is now a reserve with the Houston Rockets, and the role clearly belongs to Porter, who admits his growth continues.
“I’ve just got to make the right basketball plays and get better,” he said. “Aaron was a senior and I’m a sophomore, and I’ve still got a long ways to go.”
Oregon coach Ernie Kent echoed that theme.
“We are a team in transition,” Kent said. “We have to put Aaron Brooks behind us. At halftime, we said this is where Aaron Brooks gave us confidence in these situations, by making big plays and things like that. I thought there were several guys in the second half that stepped up and hit big shots, got big rebounds and got stops.
“The game, the atmosphere and the environment challenged us and allowed us to grow.”