When a game is tight and a point guard is looking for places to distribute the basketball, the hoop isn’t a bad place to go.
Especially when that point guard is scoring the way Oregon junior Nia Jackson has over the past two weeks.
Jackson enjoyed the most prolific scoring stretch of her career during three games this month, averaging 23 points in narrow wins over Washington State and Washington and a close loss to Southern California. Only double-teaming by UCLA, and a cold that Jackson is only now getting over, finally slowed her down in the Ducks’ loss to the Bruins on Saturday.
Entering Sunday’s noon Civil War in Matthew Knight Arena, Jackson is Oregon’s second-leading scorer at 16.3 points per game. She has raised her scoring average a full point in January, and is poised to grab the team’s scoring lead from forward Amanda Johnson (16.4).
Jackson scored 22 points both in a five-point win over WSU and a four-point victory over Washington, then came within a point of her career high with 25 in a three-point loss at USC, before being held to seven by the Bruins.
“I just really tried to be aggressive,” said Jackson, a 5-foot-7 junior from Seattle. “We needed somebody to step it up, so I really tried to get the team going. We had a couple of close games, and I needed to try to attack.”
A 34-game starter in 2009-10, Jackson averaged 10.5 points in 24.3 minutes per game, coming off a season in which she redshirted because of a knee injury. Given the loss of Taylor Lilley and Micaela Cocks to graduation, Jackson is now the Ducks’ primary backcourt scorer, and her knee has stabilized to the point that she’s fit enough to endure nearly 30 minutes per game in Pac-10 play this season.
“She’s just feeling the game,” UO senior post Victoria Kenyon said.
Never shy about driving to the basket — “getting to the rack is kind of her bread-and-butter,” Kenyon said — Jackson averaged 11 free-throw attempts during her three-game outburst, making 23-of-33. She also combined to make 6-of-10 three-point attempts and is hitting at a 48.4 percent clip from behind the arc in 2010-11, after making 31.1 percent last season.
“A lot of teams scouted me last year and knew to lay off me,” Jackson said. “I didn’t really have a consistent three-point shot or pull-up (jumper). During the offseason I tried to work toward that, and bring that to my game this year.”
The Ducks desperately needed somebody on the perimeter to fill the void after the graduation of Cocks and Lilley, who accounted for nearly 40 percent of Oregon’s scoring output a year ago. Junior college transfer Ashley Buis and senior Kristi Fallin have combined to average 14.9 points per game so far at the two-guard spot, but Jackson is taking on the lion’s share of the scoring load.
And despite the increase in point production against WSU, UW and USC, Jackson still managed to fill her role as a distributor. She averaged better than seven assists over those three games, and leads the Pac-10 at 5.9 per game on the season.
“I don’t feel like she’s forcing it,” Kenyon said of Jackson’s point production. “It’s coming more naturally.”
UO coach Paul Westhead said Jackson’s scoring is a byproduct of his up-tempo system. No player can put more pressure on the defense than the point guard.
“It’s the very nature of trying to go on the break,” Westhead said. “You’re trying to get them at a disadvantage to make a decision — are you going to play the ball, or are you going to play the potential receiver? And if you go fast enough, one or the other many times is available.”
While comfortable taking on a bigger scoring load, Jackson hopes to maintain an appropriate balance to her game.
“The team this year, everybody has to contribute somehow and has to be aggressive,” she said. “Every once in a while that’s fine, but I really am into the team contributing, the team scoring.”
UCLA’s defensive focus on Jackson meant others had to take up the slack, and to little effect, judging by the final score of 87-57 in favor of the Bruins. Jackson’s former prep teammate Christina Nzekwe is a senior post for UCLA, and after the game she told Jackson the Bruins’ strategy was to double-team her and make her pass the basketball.
“They kind of were pretty effective with that,” Jackson acknowledged with a chuckle.
She managed just five field-goal attempts, making one, and was 5-of-6 at the free-throw line. Jackson had three turnovers against the Bruins, after averaging two per game over the previous three games.
“They did a really good job of swarming her,” Westhead said. “And the next options were covered pretty good.”
Jackson was also quite sick that day, “which didn’t help at all,” she said. Still sniffling before practice Wednesday, Jackson declared herself “much better than what I was.”
She couldn’t get much better than the three-game stretch Jackson enjoyed earlier this month, a level she’ll try to achieve again Sunday against the Beavers.
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