The University of Oregon was founded in 1876 in Eugene on 295 acres along the Willamette River. The land was the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people, who were dispossessed of their homeland by the U.S. government and forcibly removed to the Coast Indian Reservation in western Oregon. It was originally established as Oregon State University after the residents of Eugene raised $27,500 and purchased 18 acres for $2.5K. Ranked No. 98 among public schools by USN&WR, No. 241 by WSJ. Endowment $1.4B.
Colors are Green and Yellow and just about anything else! Nickname is Ducks, mascot is The Oregon Duck, Fight song is Mighty Oregon, site of the filming of National Lampoon’s Animal House -haha.
Their largest athletic booster is Nike Chairman Phil Knight. Nike designed their “O” logo and donated hundreds of millions of dollars for construction projects including the Knight Library, the William W. Knight Law Center, The Matthew Knight Arena, the Hayward Field renovation, Autzen Stadium expansion, a $100 million donation to create the Oregon Athletics Legacy Fund, et al. For these reasons it is often referred to as University of Nike or The House that Nike Built.
OU Athletics claims 34 NCAA championships (The first NCAA basketball championship in 1939 vs. Ohio State, 12 Indoor T&F, 10 Outdoor T&F, 10 cross country, 1 Golf and 60 individual T&F champions.) Known as “Track Town USA”
Basketball started 1902-03 (1766-1412, .556), 1939 NCAA Champions, 2 Final Fours (last 2017), 7 Sweet Sixteens, 17 NCAA appearances, 8 conf championships (last 2021), 5 conf tourney championships (last 2019), 6 Pac-12 POY (Ron Lee, Terrell Brandon, Luke Ridnour, Joe Young, Dillon Brooks, Payton Pritchard), 1 Pac Defensive POY Jordan Bell, 5 Pac-12 COY, 1 AP 1st Team AA, 10 NBA 1st Rd Draft picks, 7 current NBA players.
All-time vs. SC 61-68, .473, Played SC twice in NCAA Tournament, SC won both 1961 and 2021.
Winningest coaches: Altman (342-147), Ernie Kent (235), Howard Hobson (212), William Reinhart (180), Steve Belko (179)
Dana Altman (14th season) – 3X Pac-12 COY, 2X MVC COY, Big Eight COY, SoCon COY
Currently, 14-6 (6-3), W: UGA, Montana, Tenn State, FL A&M, Michigan, UTEP, Cal Baptist, Kent St, USC, UCLA, UW, WSU, Cal, ASU; L: Santa Clara, Alabama, Syracuse, Colorado, Utah, AZ. NET 55 KenPom 50 (note: SC NET 100, KenPom 94)
Oregon scores 78.3 ppg (+5.4), 47.1% FG, 37.6% 3FG, 8.3 3’s/g, 69.9% FT. Rebs 34.4 pg (+1.0), Assists 14.2 pg, TO 10.7 (+2.2), 15.7 ppg off TO, Steals 7.5, Blks 3.7
Oregon Leaders
Scoring: 8 players avg 8.1 ppg or more: Jermaine Couisnard 14.9 ppg (44.2% FG, 38.6% 3FG, 70.9% FT), N’Faly Dante 14.8 ppg (60% FG, no 3FG atts, 54.8% FT), Jackson Shelstad 12.4 ppg (47.5% FG, 39.4% 3FG, 80% FT), Nate Bittle 10.0 ppg (48.7% FG, 33.3% 3FG, 72.7% FT), Jesse Zarzuela 10 ppg (38.1% FG, 26.3% 3FG, 86.7% FT)
Rebounds: Dante 9.5 pg, Kwame Evans Jr 5.3, Assists Couisnard 2.8, Shelstad 2.6, Steals Couisnard 1.9 (Pac No. 4), Blks Dante 1.5, Evans 1.3
SC scores: 74.5 ppg (-0.2), 44.5% FG, 35.9% 3FG, 8.1 3’s/g, 70.3% FT, Rebs 36.3 rpg (+0.0), Assists 15.3 apg, TOs 13.7 pg (+0.0), 14.7 ppg/TO, Steals 6.8, Blks 4.8
SC Leaders
Scoring: Boogie 18.1 ppg (No. 5 Pac) (45.4% FG, 45.3% 3FG, 74.1% FT), Collier 15.4 ppg (50.6% FG, 31.3% 3FG, 66.3% FT), Kobe 11.4 ppg (37.9% FG, 28.6% 3FG, 75.0% FT)
Rebounds: Vince 4.7 pg, DJ 4.6, Kobe 4.6, Assists – Collier 4.1 apg (No. 5 Pac), Kobe 3.5, Steals Kobe 2.1 (No. 2 Pac), Blks – Josh 2.3 (No. 1 Pac)
Pregame
On the drive up, my son asked how many I thought we would lose by today. I told him under 10. He said what makes you think we will be any better today? I was thinking ‘wow, losing by < 10 is playing better!’ -smh. We drove in silence the rest of the way.
We walked to Galen, no long student line, just Crash and 3 others seated on the stairs behind the barrier. After our performance this season, I wasn’t expecting much of a crowd, especially on a rainy day. Founders was nowhere near full, but there were more people than I expected. The room was subdued, people were enjoying their meals when the emcee interrupted to introduce the speaker, Jay Morris. Jay thanked “everyone for continuing to show up, despite a season that was disappointing and hard to stomach for everyone, including the coaches.”
He said we had another opportunity to get back on track against Oregon and noted last game (a 82-74 loss in Eugene), 2 freshmen had career highs (Kwame Evans Jr – 22, Jackson Shelstad – 21) and we would be keying on them. In that game N’Faly Dante, the big man that always gives us trouble, did not play, but he would play today. He said we’ve been having problems guarding bigs and they worked on a variety of schemes in practice to stop bigs and would throw those out there today and hoped they worked. He said that this is the start, that they need to play good defense for 40 minutes and have that lead to offense. Morris said they all understood what they must do. In his 17 yrs of coaching he has had teams that have gone through rough patches like this and quit, but that our players continue to work hard in practice to get better and have not given up on the season. They had 3 good practices this week and he hopes that leads to a different outcome for us.
A founder asked why we didn’t look like “a team” on offense, Morris disagreed saying that we are trying to play team ball but that sometimes when guys are in shooting slumps, others tend to try to change things themselves, which leads to more individual play (what some of us call ‘hero ball’). Hopefully, shots will fall, we gain confidence and start playing our best ball leading into the end of the season (I think we have all accepted that our ONLY shot at the tourney is to win the conference tournament).
Entering the arena, a modest crowd of 4862 is on hand. Jesse Williams (actor, director, producer, activist) is here. His roles include Dr. Jackson Avery in Grey’s Anatomy, Tobert of Only Murders in the Building, Holden McRae in The Cabin in the Woods.
The players are going thru warmups and the Ducks ooze confidence, hopefully they will be over-confident. I see Isaiah Collier in grey sweats putting up shots during shootaround - we later learned he is 1-2 weeks away from practicing and returning. We can’t get him back fast enough!
Game
Starting lineup dejour is Boogie, Kobe, Josh and wait for it…Oziyah and Arrinten. Andy is still searching for a working combination. Boogie hits a 3 to open the scoring, but that would be the only lead of the game for SC, they would tie it at 37-37 at 3:55, but OU would go on a 9-2 run to end the half up 46-39.
It was apparent when Arrinten had a quick TO and was pulled after less than 2 mins that Andy was going to have a quick hook, and that was the case, make an error or don’t play hard, sit on the bench. Everyone seemed to get the message and were playing very hard the rest of the game, substitutions after that were to keep players fresh.
For the half:
OU shot 40% FG (14-35), 41.2% 3FG (7-17), 84.6% FT (11-13).
SC shot 50% FG (15-30), 35.7% 3FG (5-14), 100% FT (4-4)
So much for shutting down Shelstad, he had 10 of the first 11 OU pts, putting them up 11-5. He would finish with a game high 20 pts. Kwame wasn’t much of a factor with 8 pts and I thought the strategy of quickly doubling Dante any time he got the ball worked well. He only had 6 shots and 11 pts. I think SC will take that any day. SC played well for the most part, the difference was at the line where OU shot 13 times to SC’s 4 in the half, and for the game OU had 21 FTs to only 6 for SC! The refs were definitely not ‘calling it both ways’.
Final stats:
OU: 36.9% FG (24-65), 37.5% 3FG (12-32), 85.7% FT (18-21)
SC: 43.5% FG (27-62), 34.6% 3FG (9-26), 100% FT (6-6)
Rebs were even at 35 and fastbreak pts at 8. OU had 2 more steals, 1 more pt off TO, SC had 2 more assists, 5 more TO, 6 more pts in the paint, 4 more 2nd chance pts, 11 more bench pts, yet led for all of 7 seconds. SC tied the school record with 14 blks (Josh & Page – 4, DJ – 2, Kobe, Boogie, Vince, Kijani - 1). Josh now has 137 career blks, fourth on SC’s all-time list, Chimezi is third with 168.
SC’s held it’s last 4 opponents to 39.1% shooting, a sign of playing better defense, but they give up too many offensive rebounds. Tonight’s rebs being equal is deceptive, as OU had 17 offensive boards and SC only 23 def rebs. Post-game Enfield said “Our four bigs are not very good defensive rebounders, in fact they’re poor. You can’t keep playing 15, 20, 25 minutes a game and have zero or one defensive rebound, so that really hurts us.”
Individually, I liked the way that Oziyah and Arrinten played (- give them more minutes!). Oziyah is the only player other than Boogie that can create his own shots. He had an efficient 12 pts (5-9 FG, 2-3 3FG), second to Boogie's 17. Page was next with 8, DJ and Bronny had 6. Rodman led with 7 rebs, Bronny led with a career high 7 assists and led with 2 stls.
Boogie and Kobe were a combined 6/25 FG — 3/17 3FG. Everyone else: 21/37 FG, 6/9 3FG. Biggest mystery of the season, the disappearance of Kobe’s game at both ends of the court (1-9 FG, 0-6 3FG, 4 PF in 20 min). For the season he is averaging 10.9 ppg (36.8% FG, 26.7% 3FG, 4.6 reb, 3.5 assts, 2.0 stls). He was counted on to provide more on offense and was picked as the preseason Pac-12 Defensive POY. He is not living up to expectations. Which sums up this whole team. Highly ranked in the preseason but not living up to expectations.
SC’s 78-69 loss (6th straight), drops them to 8-13 (2-8). OU improves to 15-6 (7-3). SC is 0-10 when trailing at half.
Next chance to break the losing streak: Saturday against OSU at 4 pm (Pac-12 Network).
Fight on! Beat the Beavs ---please!
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