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Mike Bellotti on Dan Lanning, then answers on the Ducks and Dawgs, N’Faly Dante’s fit, scheduling and winter survival tips.
HOTH — Mike Bellotti didn’t keep it too complicated when it came to his relationship with Oregon during his 14 years as the Ducks head coach.
“If you show you are happy and committed to a program,” Bellotti told The I-5 Corridor Thursday, “they tend to give back to you — as long as you’re winning.”
Bellotti is the winningest coach in team history and was taken care of handsomely during his time in Eugene, with the now-73-year-old saying he turned down jobs at USC, Notre Dame and Ohio State when Oregon reassured its commitments to him and developing his staff and program.
So yeah, Bellotti said, it makes sense that Dan Lanning is sticking around in Eugene. Lanning is the highest-paid coach in program history, the Ducks have provided him with the largest operating budget in program history and he’s responded by winning 81 percent of his games in his first two years as a coach.
“I wanted to make sure they wanted me there and that they were going to continue to invest in our success,” Bellotti said. “And with Dan, he’s told me Eugene is a great place for him and his family.”
That’s the part where Bellotti can relate the most. Bellotti arrived in Eugene in 1989 as the team’s offensive coordinator with a four-year-old and a three-year-old. His son Sean was born just before the 1994 season. They all got to grow up in the same area.
“I told Dan that I got a chance to see my kids,” Bellotti said. “If one of them had a game Thursday I could sneak that in. Or I might be able to catch 30 minutes of a home game on a Friday night. You can’t do that at a lot of places. I didn’t have a commute. I could ride my bike to work if I wanted. It was something that was different than what a lot of coaches had to deal with in terms of raising a family.
“Having your kids know who you are is actually a good thing.”
We’ll have more from Bellotti next week in the Michigan installment of our Big Ten preview. But now, let’s answer some mail.
You do have to feel for Washington fans a little bit here, right? — Will O.
Rebounding with Arizona’s Jedd Fisch is about as good of a move as UW could have made in response to Kalen DeBoer leaving for Alabama. But less than two weeks ago, Washington was playing for the national championship and the Huskies were the cherry on top of a century of Pac-12 football. And sure, they were set to lose massive pieces from one of the best offenses in the country, but they also had someone the entire 206 believed was the best coach in America.
This thing was built to withstand the coming Big Ten waters.
Then of course he left. And here, 10 days after the biggest game in program history, it’s nearly impossible to log into your social medium of choice without coming across a post like this one:
This one:
And this one:
And it’s not like the Huskies were stocked to the brim with depth after the two-deep. The 15 players DeBoer had signed to his 2024 class ranked 31st in the country — 25 spots behind No. 6 Oregon and 13th-overall in the Big Ten.
So should you feel bad? Probably not. But take all the despair and frustration and listlessness you felt as an Oregon fan in 2016, when two years after the national championship game the whole program fell apart, then condense all those emotions down into a 10 day stretch.
The Huskies may be fine in the long run. But they’ve taken one hell of a punch here to start 2024.
Any kind of update on other coaches on staff at Oregon? Made my day to hear that Coach is staying put, but any news of coordinators or position coaches heading elsewhere? Anyone new incoming? Adam Bryant
There’s certainly been a little hustle and bustle. Defensive GA Tony Washington Jr. is rejoining Chip Kelly in UCLA to be the Bruins defensive line coach. Assistant strength coach Shaud Williams is heading to Mississippi State, and most notably, the Ducks just saw cornerbacks coach Demetrice Martin leave for Jonathan Smith’s staff at his alma mater Michigan State.
Oregon promoted safeties coach Chris Hampton to the overarching “defensive backs” coach to cover Martin’s departure.
With that being said, this has been one of the least drama filled offseasons I can remember in terms of the Ducks needing to fill large vacancies. With Will Stein and Tosh Lupoi coming back for 2024, the Ducks will return both coordinators for the first time since after the 2014 season.
If Oregon has a successful year this season, I would expect both of those guys to be in line for head coaching positions next offseason. It wouldn’t surprise me, either, if other staffs try and poach Junior Adams after the run he’s had producing receivers at Eastern Washington, UW and now Oregon.
What is in your car’s winter survival kit? — Mikey B.
You know, last week I spent a few minutes thinking about trying to get down to Eugene for the Cal game on Saturday. Then I started to have flashbacks to last year and decided to sit this one out.
Maybe I’ve grown wiser in the last year. Maybe laziness won out. Either way, I do have a few bottles of water that I keep in my car these days — you never know when you might spend 10 hours on I-5 — and always keep the multi-use hockey stick in the back for snow removal.
Maybe I missed it by why didn’t Oregon play Stanford and OSU missed Cal last week? — Greg
It’s just the way the schedule works out, Greg. Every year the Ducks (13-3, 5-0 Pac-12) play all but one team twice. Two years ago it was Arizona. Last year it was USC. And this year for the Ducks, it’s Stanford.
The tough break for Oregon is that lone game against the Cardinal comes at Stanford, where the Cardinal (9-7, 4-2 Pac-12) just knocked off a pretty decent Utah (12-4, 3-3) team 79-73. And with the fight Cal has shown of late, that turns into an nervy roadtrip for the Ducks to close out the month of February.
With N’Faly Dante coming back how do you see the Oregon men’s basketball team doing? They have been impressive so far without their bigs but they have not, yet, played the top Pac-12 contenders. — TJA
What, exactly, is a Pac-12 contender these days? After hot starts, Arizona and Utah have combined for five conference losses, USC and UCLA are putrid, Oregon State has lost three straight and I have no idea what to make of a Colorado team that beat then-No. 15 Miami by 27 points in December then lost by 47 to a wayward Wildcats squad a few weeks later.
I want to be careful banging the Oregon drum here because we’ve gotten ahead of ourselves before, but even without a first-team all-conference center the Ducks have been the only consistent team in the entire conference.
They have the 35th most efficient offense in the country, according to KenPom, they’re up to 45th nationally in 3-point percentage and the active defense you’ve heard Altman talk proudly of this season has produced the country’s 11th-most steals. The biggest hole on this team has been defensively right up the middle, where the Ducks rank 163rd in blocks per game as they’ve used Kwame Evans Jr. and Mahamadou Diawara to patch things up with Dante and Nate Bittle on the mend.
(A quick note about Bittle: In a story last month I included Nate Bittle’s name in a list of players out for the year at a time when his status was still very much up in the air. It looks like he’s going to play and I wanted to own up to that one.)
If the Ducks keep shooting like they have been, Dante’s biggest impact doesn’t need to be offensively. With that being said, I would love to see what a polished pick-n-roll looks like between him and Jackson Shelstad. Having played his high school in Portland, Shelstad has never really had the luxury of having a 7-foot big man to run the offense around. And while Dante had some decent chemistry with Will Richardson, it’s been a while since he’s played with a guard of this caliber.
Yeah the promo video was cool and all. But don’t all coaches say they aren’t going anywhere until they are going somewhere? — Kevin Palmer
DeBoer nearly pulled off the perfect exit.
Because nobody in Washington could be complaining this much if the now-Alabama coach had managed to beat Michigan last week.
Like, you could be disappointed, but a two-year stint which included a complete program rebuild, a Pac-12 title, some of the best quarterback play the Pac-12 has ever seen AND a national championship? Shoot, the Washington boosters might have sent DeBoer off to Tuscaloosa with an Adidas gift basket and an open invite to use the boat the next time he’s in town.
Remember, Seattle is a town that still celebrates an American League Championship appearance from 29 years ago.
Because here’s the thing: I bet DeBoer still leaves if the Huskies win. I bet that’s how he saw his exit going — not instead with a loss followed by an awkward goodbye with the quarter of the team who bothered to show up to his final meeting.
He almost pulled it off. Almost. But the degree of difficulty in pulling off the steps-stool move can only be summarized by our good friend George Costanza.
It can’t be done. Unless, of course, Lanning wins a title at Oregon, then takes over after Alabama moves on from the one guy crazy enough to follow Saban.
But no phone calls the day after.
The Oregon men’s basketball team is 13-3 and improving with every game. The women’s team is going in the complete opposite direction. Not too long ago we were cheering Sabrina Ionescu and a deep supporting cast, watching Kelly Graves in the Final Four and marveling as he assembled the #1 recruiting class. What has gone so wrong (so fast) and do you think Coach Graves can turn it around? Wade Clack
I’m not going to pretend like I’ve been covering women’s basketball enough to give you a definitive answer here. But what I can tell you is this: the Ducks had created a near-perfect team — then the world stopped for a year and college sports underwent its most transformative period of my lifetime.
I kind of get it if it takes some time to recover from that, then throw in some injuries and the fact that the transfer portal seemingly comes for all programs at this point and you get the perfect storm that’s led to results below the standard of a coach who reached at least the Sweet 16 four times in his 10 years as the team’s coach.
It certainly didn’t help this year when Peyton Scott went down for the season in November. But with wins in their last two games, including an important 70-68 win over Arizona on Sunday, it does seem like there’s signs of life here.
And that’s the most important thing. Because we’ve seen the last few years humble some of even the best coaches. It happened to Dana Altman. It happened to Scott Rueck. They’ve both bounced back this year.
With Oregon’s move to the Big Ten and the increased reach they’ll have on the recruiting trail, I really got to think things for Graves will start trending back toward the norm as well.
— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor
