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QuickTake:
Behind a combined 44 points from Nate Bittle and Takai Simpkins – along with a Red Panda halftime appearance – Saturday at Matthew Knight Arena was a lesson in overcoming adversity.
Dana Altman knows what Oregon’s record is (9–16), and he is plenty aware the 10-game losing streak he and the Ducks brought with them to Matthew Knight Arena on Saturday is the worst of his career.
He knows his men’s basketball team has no chance of an at-large NCAA Tournament bid, that its star guard Jackson Shelstad won’t return to the floor this season, and that a handful of the 6,102 fans who came for Oregon’s home game against Penn State did so just to see the halftime act.
This isn’t the year Altman planned for. And while there will be plenty of time at the end of the season to hand out judgments and evaluations for how and why 2025-26 went off the rails, worrying about the big picture hasn’t done much for a 67-year-old coach trying to pull his team out of a nosedive.
There are still games to be played. Saturday showed that, at the very least, Altman’s Ducks are going to go down swinging.
Behind a combined 44 points from Takai Simpkins and Nate Bittle, the Ducks downed Penn State 83-72. It was Oregon’s first win since Jan. 2, only its second in Big Ten play, and it pulled Oregon out of sole possession of last place in the conference into a four-way tie at the bottom.
The Ducks were great on Saturday. They shot 50% from the floor, 52% from three, out-rebounded Penn State 32-27 and led for 31 of the game’s 40 minutes.
It wasn’t a win that’s going to drastically change Oregon’s fortunes — or even the larger narrative of the worst season of Altman’s Oregon career. But for the time being, it’s a start.
“One of the great things about college athletics is you learn to fight adversity,” Altman said. “When stuff doesn’t go your way, you fight through it. That’s what I keep telling our team. We’re going to be judged on how we fight. If we give into it, our former players are going to be really upset with us.
“It’s one thing to have a bad record. It’s another throwing in the towel. Those are two different dynamics.”
Bittle, for one, doesn’t even know where to find the towel.
After leading Oregon to the Round of 32 of last season’s NCAA Tournament, the fifth-year senior returned to Oregon and came into the year as a preseason All-Big Ten selection. He missed nearly a month with ankle injuries, returned last week ahead of schedule for losses against Purdue and Indiana, and spent Saturday displaying a mixture of grimace — he’s moving around gingerly at times — and dominance.
Bittle hit 6 of 9 shots, 8 of 11 free throws, grabbed 7 rebounds and dished out 5 assists.
No, it doesn’t seem like Bittle is going to end his Oregon run with a Final Four appearance. Still, he said he has only three home games left and isn’t about to go out quietly.
“My time in a Duck uniform is going to come to an end here after this year,” he said. “I just want to make the best of it with this team, our coaching staff and everybody that’s been with me for five years.”
The Ducks’ win was a nice complement to Saturday’s star attraction: Red Panda. Oregon let fans know — multiple times — that the acrobat known for riding an 8-foot-tall unicycle and stacking plates on her head would be performing at halftime. Red Panda has amassed quite the following in NBA circles — to the point that she made national news last summer when she fell off her unicycle and fractured her wrist on July 1 while performing at the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup.
Yet there she was on Saturday in Eugene. Her wrist was healed. Her execution was flawless, and she didn’t bat an eye during a grand finale that saw her flip five bowls from her foot to her head.
She had overcome her adversity. The crowd went wild.
Then the Ducks went about doing the same.