[jwplayer ji9kfliL]
If you watched the Oregon Ducks take on the No. 3 Arizona Wildcats on Saturday night, it felt pretty apparent that you were witnessing two NCAA Tournament teams duke it out on the hardwood.
A back-and-forth matchup that ended in a thrilling 84-81 victory for the Wildcats proved once again to Oregon fans that their team can play with the best of the best when asked to, and the Ducks almost became the first team in NCAA history to win road games against three top-5 ranked teams in one season. Unfortunately, Oregon couldn’t pull off the upset, and their tournament hopes took what might have been the final death blow.
Or did they?
If you look at the NET rankings, Oregon’s impressive performance actually helped the Ducks in the standings, and the game against No. 3 Arizona moved them up quite a bit.
Oregon men's basketball moved up from 72 to 63 in NET after losing at Arizona. You read that right. Impact of Arizona to UO's avg. loss, avg. opponent NET and SOS combined with Colorado's win over Stanford all helped the Ducks on paper. Extremely likely to be all moot, but …
— James Crepea (@JamesCrepea) February 20, 2022
With the bump from playing Arizona, the Ducks also have a chance to further move up in the standings this week with home games against No. 13 UCLA and No. 17 USC this coming week. Earlier in the season, Oregon made noise by upsetting both teams on the road in a single weekend, and will likely need to do so again in order to earn an at-large big.
In ESPN’s outlook of the current landscape, the Ducks are listed as one of the “First Four Out” teams, but they made note of the hope that Dana Altman’s squad should still have:
On the same day that Oregon played at Arizona, the Wildcats were named a No. 1 seed in the NCAA’s bracket preview. And seeing a desperate bubble team like the Ducks go toe-to-toe on equal footing with a confirmed No. 1 seed was both thrilling and a bit disconcerting. The basketball was amazing, but how did a team as self-evidently good as Oregon get to the point where it’s being shown on the “first four out” list? At least Dana Altman’s team still has hope even after falling to the Wildcats by three points. Home games are up next against UCLA and USC.
The Ducks still have a lot of work to do, but if they can continue the solid play they showed on Saturday night and push the Southern California teams to the brink, earning a couple of top-25 wins, their tournament hopes are still alive. Should they lose either game, there’s still the hope that they can run the table in the Pac-12 tournament and get in that way, as well. It won’t be easy, but there is certainly still a chance…
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