Flawed Ducks Top Team in Pac-12

The top team in the Pac-12 isn’t No. 9-ranked Arizona. No, it’s the No. 23-ranked Oregon Ducks, who are 9-3 in conference play and 20-5 overall. They were one of the hottest teams in college basketball just a few short weeks ago, but hit a three-game losing skid starting on January 30, when they lost to Stanford on the road 76-52. Two more hideous losses followed, with the Ducks dropping one at Cal 58-54 and, in perhaps their lowest moment this season, a home loss to Colorado by the mind boggling score of 48-47. Much of their skid was attributed to the loss of guard Dominic Artis, who coach Dana Altman says “stretches the floor” and opens up opportunities for the rest of the Ducks offense. This Oregon squad is not without their problems, but they’re better than they have been in several years, and have an incredibly easy schedule against Pac-12 cupcakes the rest of the way.

Unlike the three-point shooting Ducks teams of old, this current Oregon iteration has found success playing defense and rebounding the ball, two skills that usually predicate success in the Big Dance. Or at least, they did earlier in the season; during their losing skid, the Ducks defense failed to make key stops late in the game, and the offense got sloppy down the stretch to further compound their woes. The Ducks have won two games in a row against Utah and the Washington Huskies, and the rest of their schedule is pretty soft except for a match against the suddenly-good Colorado Buffalos, but there are a few problem areas they have to tighten up if they want to make a run next month.

Oregon simply has to find a way to control their turnovers on the road. Against Cal, the Ducks turned it over 22 times and did not score over the last four minutes of the game. If they want to be anything more than a pleasantly surprising upstart team this season, they can’t have performances like that on the road. “We had a six-point lead with 3 (minutes) to go and we never got any stops,” Ducks coach Dana Altman said after that game. “Turnovers and second-chance points were the difference. It’s not just the point guard, it’s everybody.”

Like a lot of young teams that are experiencing real success for the first time, the Ducks have reeled at times in tough moments this season, particularly on the road. Their total no-show against Stanford in Palo Alto was the most egregious of such moments.

“We were in kind of a shock after we lost to Stanford and we couldn’t get ourselves prepared to play 40-minute games, but I think we’re getting that feeling back,” Oregon forward Arsalan Kazemi said. “The game against Utah helped us a lot.”

Oregon’s schedule gets easy as we head toward March Madness, but are they a good bet? It really depends. Like many teams, they’re a totally different entity on their home court than they are on the road. However, the spreads tell a different story; the Ducks are 6-9 ATS at home and 4-4 ATS on the road. Still, for a team that was going nowhere only a few short seasons ago, the Ducks have leapt from reclamation project to top-25 team with remarkable speed. That’s something the program can build on moving forward.