Oregon's Catron Immeasurable

It's tough to measure just how important Joevan Catron has been to the University of Oregon men's basketball team this season.

Because the actual numbers simply don't tell enough of the story.

For starters, there's the literal measurement - Catron is listed at 6-foot-6, yet he spends much of his time playing in the post, scoring and rebounding against bigger, taller opponents.

Then there are the statistical measurements - season averages of 15.5 points and 6.7 rebounds per game; nothing shabby, by any means, but certainly not enough to get an idea of what the guy the Ducks call "Duke" has meant to their season.

Put it this way - without Catron, Oregon isn't in the College Basketball Invitational's best-of-three finals series. The Ducks aren't 19-17 and guaranteed at least a .500 finish.

Heck, they probably aren't even within a whiff of .500.

"He's kept our team going," Ducks coach Dana Altman said after Catron finished with 24 points and 11 rebounds in a 79-71 victory over Boise State on March 23.

That win moved Oregon into the CBI finals, where the Ducks will face Creighton, the team Altman coached the past 16 seasons before taking over the UO program. The series starts Monday, March 28, at Creighton, with Game 2 set for Wednesday, March 30, at Eugene and Game 3, if necessary, in Eugene on Friday, April 1.

The double-double against Boise was Catron's third in a row, but even his statistics against the Broncos fail to tell just how big a role he played in the victory.

Catron struggled early on. He was getting double-teamed in the post, and he was 0-for-5 from the field with just four points and four rebounds going into halftime.

But one of the impressive things about Catron's game is that even when he's struggling, he typically finds a way to contribute, particularly when the Ducks need it most. After that rough first half, he went 6-for-10 from the field in the second half and 8-for-10 from the free-throw line to score 20 of his 24 points. The biggest of those came in the final five-and-a-half minutes, when he tallied 14 of the Ducks' final 16 points as the Broncos closed a 20-point second-half deficit to just six with 1:21 left to play.

Then, with 1:13 left, Catron took a long pass from E.J. Singler for a layup and an eight-point lead.

And with 54 seconds to go, he hauled in another long pass - this one from Garrett Sim - and threw down a rare dunk to make it 78-68, effectively locking up the win for Oregon.

"He's a savvy basketball player," Altman said. "He's got a great passion for the game and he's more talented than some people give him credit for."

The Pac-10 Conference didn't give Catron enough credit, as far as the Ducks and their coach are concerned, placing him on the all-conference second team and not the first.

Much of that probably was due to Oregon going 7-11 in Pac-10 play, but once again, if not for Catron, the undersized and understaffed Ducks wouldn't have had even seven conference victories this season.

Oregon lost a lot of talent - and size - after Ernie Kent was fired last offseason. Centers Josh Crittle and Michael Dunigan left the team, as did Jamil Wilson, Drew Wiley and Matthew Humphrey. It would have surprised almost no one if the Ducks had finished the 2010-11 season with only a handful of wins. And when Pac-10 Conference play began in late December, a "handful" of wins was sounding a bit optimistic.

Oregon opened the conference slate with four consecutive losses, extending to six a losing streak that began on December 17 at Virginia. The Ducks finished the Pac-10 season the way they started it - with four straight losses - but in between, Oregon won seven of 10 games, thanks largely to Catron.

"In December there, we were struggling so bad that if it wouldn't have been for Joevan saying 'no, we're going to keep going,' we wouldn't be winning a few ball games," Altman said.

"We're going to keep going" is the same thing Catron said when the Ducks were initially approached about playing in the CBI.

As Altman has acknowledged, there's not much prestige in this tournament. Players are tired and banged up at this point of the season. And schools have to pay about $60,000 per game for the rights to host in the CBI.

In other words, there were several good reasons for the Ducks to politely decline the CBI offer and just call it a season.

But Altman left it up to his players to decide if they wanted to continue playing, and Catron's was the most emphatic "yes" he received.

Truth be told, Catron's vote was the one that mattered most, anyway.

"The guys know that Joevan wants to play," Altman said after Oregon defeated Duquesne 77-75 in the tournament quarterfinals on March 21. "He's been our leader all year, and I think they've picked it up."

Catron has certainly done his part throughout the tournament, opening with 24 points and 12 rebounds in a 68-59 win over Weber State, then turning in 14 points and 11 rebounds against Duquesne despite facing persistent double-teams throughout the game.

The numbers are impressive, to be sure.

They just don't tell the whole story. They don't reveal the two clutch baskets Catron hit in the final three minutes, or the offensive rebound he snagged with 1:22 left to help the Ducks run down the clock, or what he told his teammates as they huddled up with 1.5 seconds left, up by three, with Duquesne's Sean Johnson at the free-throw line ready to attempt three foul shots.

"It was a litle nerve-wracking," Sim said of the situation, "but we came together and Joe said 'They're going to give us one of these, so let's box out.' "

Johnson missed the first and made the second, and as he set up for that third free-throw attempt, everyone knew he was going to intentionally miss to give Duquesne a chance at a game-tying putback.

"I told the team in the huddle I knew I'd grab the rebound," Catron said.

And he did, securing the ball, and the victory, to extend his final season at Oregon just a little longer.

"I love playing for the Ducks," Catron said. "It's been great while I've been here, and I just don't want to see it end, so I'm doing everything in my power to help us keep going."

The effort has been obvious, and contagious. But try using statistics to measure everything Catron has been doing to help keep the Ducks going, and you fall short - even though averages of 20.7 points and 11.3 rebounds in three CBI games are impressive evidence of what he's been up to.

Still, consider that last rebound Catron snagged against Duquesne. It shows up on the box score as a single digit - representing an "11" instead of a "10" in the senior forward's rebounding column.

If you saw the play, however, you know the rebound was more significant than that.

It was - like Joevan Catron's importance to the Ducks this season - immeasurable.