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UO lost again, but it was a close one against the best team in the country. For Dana Altman’s Ducks, that’s progress.
(Photo of Jacob Young by Eric Evans/GoDucks.com)
EUGENE — Dana Altman has won far too many games and is paid too much money to really consider any sort of moral victory. And at the end of the night, Oregon’s 78-70 loss to No. 1 Baylor Saturday at Matthew Knight Arena was just that: a loss. It was Oregon’s third in four games, one that dropped the Ducks back to .500 overall, continued to ratchet up the importance of the upcoming Pac-12 season and left Oregon’s 12th-year head coach lamenting a seven-minute stretch in the second half that saw a 49-46 Oregon lead evaporate in a 17-2 Baylor run.
“Our execution was really bad and they got out in transition,” Altman said. “The game really flipped.”
But, consider this: Four weeks ago, Oregon lost 81-49 to BYU. Three weeks ago, Houston embarrassed the Ducks 78-49. And while the Ducks have picked up a few stat-padding victories against the likes of Montana, UC Riverside and Portland, the Ducks’ best win of the season through 12 games remains its second game of the year against Southern Methodist.
And this Baylor team? The Bears came into Eugene undefeated with a top five offense and defense (KenPom). They’re the first No. 1 team in the country to play at Matthew Knight Arena, and the first to visit Eugene since UCLA in 2007.
This Baylor team is a legitimate national title contender. This Oregon team, right now, is far from that.
So when Altman looked through the stat sheet and saw that the Ducks out-rebounded Baylor, shot better from the floor, shot better from the line, had more points in the paint and led for more than 24 minutes of the contest, well, Altman felt pretty good about that.
“There have been some games where our competitive level wasn’t good,” Altman said. “Our competitive level was good. The rebounds against a big, physical team, we were right there. But some timely offensive rebounds by them, and then we had that stretch there (in the second half), our turnovers got them some easy buckets and really flipped the game.”
For the game’s first 20 minutes the Ducks took it to Baylor in the paint, relying on center N’Fally Dante as the fulcrum in the middle as the Ducks’ outside shooters connected on 44 percent of their threes. It was such a strong start that a Rivaldo Soares three in transition with 4:54 to play in the first half gave Oregon its biggest lead of the game at 34-24.
De’Vion Harmon would finish the game with 18 points to lead the Ducks, and sensed afterwards that a roster with four new faces in the starting lineup from a season ago was beginning to find something.
“Against BYU and Houston, we didn’t compete. We got kicked,” said Harmon, a junior who played two seasons at Oklahoma before coming to Eugene. “Tonight we competed. If we played with a little more smartness, I feel like we win that game.”
The progress for Oregon comes at an important stretch. The Ducks have just one more nonconference game before the schedule flips. And with an 0-2 start in Pac-12 play thanks to losses to Arizona State and Stanford earlier this month, it’s going to be an uphill climb for a team looking to make the NCAA Tournament for the eighth time in Altman’s 12 seasons with the program.
“Do I think we can turn it around quickly? Probably not,” Altman said last week. “I was very up front with the team. This is something we’re going to have to do every day in practice for a long time to be a consistent team. Can we have some bright moments? Yeah, but we’re going to have some (bad) moments because we just don’t have the habits necessary to have that consistency.”
The Ducks played solid for about 30 minutes Saturday. They’ll push for 40 next, hopefully leaving moral victories behind. But until then, a team that’s been bad more often than good so far in 2021 will have to take compliments where it can get them.
“Put your hands together,” Oregon public address announced Don Essig said as time expired with departing fans filling the aisles. “We just saw a great basketball game.”
— Tyson Alger
