Coming into the Oregon Ducks 2021-22 men’s basketball season, there were some extremely high expectations. A lot of new pieces were on the roster, but with Dana Altman at the helm, and veteran guard Will Richardson returning, a top-15 ranking and projections deep into the NCAA Tournament were not outlandish.
A month into the season, the results have subverted those expectations by a large margin. Oregon is currently 5-4 with blowout losses to BYU, Saint Mary’s, and Houston. Their fourth defeat, a close 69-67 OT game against Arizona State, came against one of the worst teams in the Pac-12 conference. This is certainly not the product that we expected to see on the floor at Matthew Knight Arena.
[lawrence-related id=14211]
We knew it would take a little bit of time for Altman to assemble this Rubix Cube and get the team playing winning basketball, but nobody expected the lows to be this far down in the basement.
“We’re making fundamental mistakes that should not be made on December 8th. Maybe on November 9th when we play our first game,” Altman said in a press conference on Wednesday. “We’re not getting better.”
One of the main problems for the Ducks is that their star players are not playing like stars at the moment. Richardson, who has been among the team’s leading scorers over the past couple of seasons, is often struggling to find the bottom of the net.
The several talented transfers to come to Eugene aren’t doing much better. So far, both Jacob Young (9.7 ppg) and De’Vion Harmon (8.7 ppg) are struggling to have the impact that we projected, and Quincy Guerrier (6.2 ppg, 4.8 rpg) is playing way below his ceiling that we saw at Syracuse. All of this has led to a sort of malaise settling over the team in the month of December.
“Everybody’s a little down,” Altman said. “As competitors, you know you’ve underperformed, and that bothers you. So you’ve got to fight you, got to compete. And I told them it’s not going to be easy to get it back. It’s not like turning on the light switch fellas. We’re going to have to battle our tails off to get it back, and you’re going to have to show great resolve to get it done. And I’d like to say I still believe they will, but it is not going to be easy.”
[lawrence-related id=14169]
Throughout the season, the Ducks have shown more than a few bright spots, including a blazing start to the year where they had big wins over Texas Southern and SMU. They were also able to blow out Montana and dispatch with UC Riverside. The highs have been impressive, but the lows have been tough to watch. We know from watching that the talent is there to be a really good team, but the consistency is what’s lacking.
“Do I think we can turn this around quickly? Probably not,” Altman said. “You know this is something we’re going to have to do every day in practice and for a long time to be a consistent team. Can we have some bright moments? Yea, but we’re going to have some moments because we just don’t have the habits necessary to have that consistency. And that’s been proven in games, it’s just not my opinion. That’s been proven.”
Coming up, Oregon is going to have some tough tests on the schedule. They travel to Stanford on Sunday and then host Portland on Tuesday — two games that are extremely winnable should they play to their potential. On Friday, though, the No. 2 Baylor Bears come to town for an early-season clash. Before the season started, this looked to be arguably the premier game of the year; now it might seem like a better idea to watch with your eyes partially covered.
The Ducks may come out and surprise us, giving Baylor a test deep in the woods. They certainly have the talent to play with some of the top teams in the country, but a lack of consistency has us questioning which team is going to show up on any given night. Will it be the sharp-shooting unit that downed a future tournament team in SMU? Or the inept offensive squad who failed to score 20 points in the first half during three of four games last month?
That’s certainly the million-dollar question for Dana Altman, and after talking to him on Wednesday, he obviously isn’t shy to give you an honest answer.
[listicle id=14099]