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“Underperforming” was a common word used to describe both the men’s and women’s Oregon Ducks basketball teams through the first two months of the season.
After both programs were consensus picks to finish 2nd in the Pac-12 in the 2021 season, a combined 17-11 record almost 30 games into the season was not expected. Due to injuries, COVID, and quite honestly a flurry of mistakes and poor play, neither Oregon team could quite get their momentum going in the right direction.
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That all seemed to change on one weekend in January, though. The Ducks basketball program entered the night of January 13th with two programs hovering too close to the NCAA Tournament bubble for comfort. They emerged 5 days later with a pair of the hottest teams in the nation, and almost a sure spot in the postseason festivities.
Let’s start with Kelly Graves and his squad. Led by a big three of Te-Hina Paopao, Sedona Prince, and Nyara Sabally, things were thrown off the rails early when Paopao and Sabally were sidelined with injuries. It also hurt that transfer guard Endyia Rogers was forced to miss time with a broken hand, and the point guard duties were shouldered onto Maddie Scherr, who did a good job of treading water.
Now that the team is healthy, though, you can see them start to get back on track. That was clear over the weekend when in a matter of two days, the Ducks upset No. 7 Arizona in OT, 84-81, followed by a blowout win over No. 9 UCONN on Monday, 72-59.
“The energy is totally different after this weekend,” said Te-Hina Paopao, who had a combined 46 points across the two games, leading the way for Oregon. “When you have a healthy Oregon team—we’re still getting there, we’re still trying to get that continuity—but after this weekend we definitely found the flow of things. Being able to have a healthy team is a joy to have.”
As it stands now, the Ducks are one of 6 teams in the nation with three wins over Top-25 ranked teams. They are currently No. 17 in the NET rankings, which is a number that will likley go up after the UCONN results.
“This was an enormous weekend. This hopefully puts us back in the national discussion as a team to be reckoned with,” head coach Kelly Graves said. “You know, these are two quality wins, and I think people had kind of forgotten about us for a while, and rightfully so. But really, if you look at our schedule, this was the 4th game we’ve played against last year’s Final Four teams. We’ve played every single one of them, and that doesn’t happen very often. We ended up going 2-2 in those games. We’re still a work in progress, we’re nowhere near as good as we can be, but we’re going to keep trying to get better.”
The toughest part of Oregon’s schedule may be behind them, but they still have games remaining against Arizona and Stanford, as well as a back-to-back showdown against Oregon State. We may not be back to the days of talking about the Ducks as a potential 1-seed in the tournament, but after this weekend, we can feel confident about watching them play in March.
What Dana Altman’s team did over the weekend quite literally had never been done before in the Pac-12. It hadn’t been done anywhere in college basketball since 1975 when the Clemson Tigers accomplished a similar feat.
That feat was defeating a pair of top-5 ranked teams on the road in the span of 5 days. To make it even sweeter, the Ducks did it in three days.
With road wins over No. 3 UCLA and No. 5 USC, Dana Altman put his team back on the map and reminded the college basketball world at large that you can never count him out in early January.
Led by a career-high 28 points from Will Richardson on Saturday night, as well as some stellar play from transfer Jacob Young, you have to think that the Ducks are among the best teams in the Pac-12, which features a trio of formerly top-10 ranked schools at the top. If this weekend showed us anything, it’s that Oregon can play with the likes of those guys.
“We needed a big week; our guys knew that,” Altman said on Saturday night. “I’ve been talking about a sense of urgency since the Baylor game — before that. ‘Fellas, we can’t bury ourselves any further. We still don’t have any room for error.’ It’s Jan. 15 and you’re already talking about you don’t have any room for error. You’ve got to bring it every night. That sense of urgency is going to have to come every night.”
Despite the pair of impressive wins, the Ducks are still ranked No. 58 in the NET. However, that is up from No. 91 entering the week. If the NCAA Tournament were to start tomorrow, Oregon would be in, likely as a 12 seed playing in the first four.
As Altman said, though, there’s no room for error, and if they want to secure their spot in March, they need to take full advantage of the rest of their schedule. That starts this coming week with the start of a 4-game homestand that can build off of what Altman has regarded as one of the craziest stretches of basketball he’s seen as a coach.
“It’s 42 years (I’ve been coaching) and I haven’t seen anything like it and man we needed it,” Altman said. “We needed something to jumpstart us. Three road wins this week, now we go home. I told the guys that being at home doesn’t do anything for us if we don’t take care (of business).”
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