Dana Altman vs.

Here's just a few fun little tidbids. Read into them as much, or as little, as you like.

At Creighton, Dana Altman has only coached against 1 current Pac-10 head coach, that being Arizona's Sean Miller. Creighton was 3-1 vs. Miller's Xavier squad.

The Tucson Citizen has some quotes from Miller at the time.

“They beat us up,” Miller said before Xavier ended the three-game losing streak with a 79-66 win on Dec. 5, 2007. “They hit us in the mouth, and I say that in a positive way.

“One of the reasons they beat us three years in a row is their style. They really force you to handle pressure and compete at a high level.”

Even though Miller is his only Pac-10 rival, Altman has coached against some other targets on our coaching search.

Mark Turgeon was the head coach of another Missouri Valley Conference member, Wichita State, from 2000-2007. Perhaps its not an overly fair contest, as Altman had the time to build Creighton up before Turgeon began. However, Turgeon was 71-55, in conference, during those years while Altman was 91-35. As you can guess, Altman had the upper hand in the head to head meetings, 12-4. Turgeon only finished ahead of Altman once in those 7 seasons, before parlaying it into the Texas A&M gig.

According to Fox Sports, Mark had this to say about the hire.

"He’s a great hire for Oregon,” Turgeon said. "He runs a great system that is disciplined, but very exciting. I’ve watched Dana do more with less better than any coach in the country. Dana and his family with fit perfectly into the community. It’s a great hire by Pat Kilkenny.”

Billy Donovan, often rumored to be linked to airplane drops full of money Phil Knight was supposedly going to give him for the Oregon job, has also played against Dana Altman. One of Altman's tournament wins was knocking off #5 seed Florida, in the ill-fated 12/5 matchup, in 2002. A clutch 3 pointer by Terrell Taylor sealed the deal in a classic March Madness finish.

Altman later lost to Florida in the 2008 NIT, so has a 1-1 record against Billy D.

In the final week of the search Dayton's Brian Gregory was also supposedly on the short list. Altman also played Gregory to a standstill, 2-2 in four meetings against the Flyers.

A couple other names we've heard come up during our search that Altman played against, at Creighton, and his record against them.

Mike Brey (Notre Dame) 1-0
Tad Boyle (N. Colorado) 1-0
Steve Alford (New Mexico) 1-1

And the job falls to...Dana Altman.

Make no mistake. Dana Altman wasn't our first, second, or even third choice. The process of searching for a coach, after firing Ernie Kent, was monumentally bungled. When you hear Joe Giansante spin stories about how magnificent the search process was, its not true.

With all that said, we probably ended up with a better coach than the search process warranted. We didn't do him any favors in giving him the job 2 weeks after the Spring signing period began, and for that reason Dana Altman hired a month ago is a much better hire than Dana Altman hired today. However, Dana Altman is a very good coach.

I've seen mixed reactions from Duck fans, and fans from other programs, many of whom have never heard of Altman. If you haven't heard of him, its because you don't really follow college basketball. Altman's name was always brought up for major conference job openings, along with guys like Mark Few, a handful of years ago. His star has faded a bit since he backed out of taking the Arkansas job a few years ago, but he was a very hot name in coaching awhile back. Back during our first Elite 8 run, Creighton was actually in our bracket. They knocked off Florida in the first round and then fell to the same Illinois team that beat us. That was the tail end of a stretch of 5 consecutive NCAA tournaments that Altman had taken Creighton to, and he was thought to be the "next big thing", in coaching.

In hindsight, he probably should have bolted then, while his star was brightest. In athletics I'm a believer in the philosophy, "if you can go, you should go". I just think the odds are against you sticking around, as unfair as it might seem. Look no further than Taylor Mays this weekend. Could have been a top-10 pick last year. Falls to the 3rd round, after Pete Carroll passes on him 3 times, this year.

Loyalty is a great quality. Unfortunately its not rewarded in sports. When you are a hot name, nobody even considers the downside. When you stick around past that point, people begin to nitpick and to really study you more in-depth. Again, if you're a hot name, and you ever want to move on you should just do it, because odds are there's nowhere to go but down.

I think you could make the same argument about Ernie. Shortly after that first Elite 8, Ernie could have gone. If he did, nobody would have ever thought anything other than that he was great here. His first 6 seasons resulted in 3 tournament appearances, including that Elite 8, a Pac-10 championship and we finished in the top half of the conference 5 out of those 6 years. Ernie could have walked away a legend, gotten a better job and again, if people took my advice of leaving when they are hot, we might have ended up with Dana Altman right then as well.

I'll be doing a lot more, in-depth, blogging on Altman in the coming days and weeks. With some detailed looks, and probably video, of his Creighton teams. With scores and analysis of how they play against top competition, and lesser competition. And how I think he'll utilize the roster we have returning.

Thud!

Hopes come crashing down, once again, as Mike Anderson turns down a million dollar raise to coach here. Its not overly suprising. I was more suprised that he appeared to show interest, last week, to be honest. I never thought he would be on our list. Anderson is my favorite coach in the game, though, so this one definitely stings. We won't do better than him.

Not that we have to do better than him, to be successful. Some of the names we are hearing now, however, definitely are not better. Mark Gottfried is the latest name they are throwing around. Yes, Mark Gottfried with some baggage. Yes, Mark Gottfried, forced out of his alma mater midway through last season in part because of results like the 30 point beating Oregon's 8 win team gave him in the Maui Invitational.

It was only one game, and Gottfried's entire tenure at Alabama wasn't as bad as that last year might have made it seem, but still he's a pretty medicore hire. 7 tournaments in 13 years is nice, and better than what Ernie did, but not outstanding. They were a middle of the road SEC team for most of his tenure, and he did go as far as the Elite 8 one year in the tournament. He's probably a better coach than Ernie, despite the results of the last head to head meeting. With that said there are advantages at coaching your alma mater. Ernie had some here, and Gottfried did at 'Bama. Its hard to say if he would be any more successful than Ernie, better coach or not.

Mike Anderson would be the perfect fit for us

The latest news is all a buzz about Pat Kilkenny meeting with Mike Anderson today, in an attempt to entice him to Oregon. This is absolutely great news, to me, and would be a fantastic hire. Mike Anderson would be the perfect coach for Oregon right now and I hope we can make it happen.

First of all, if you've read my posts on the message boards in the past, or read this blog a bit, you probably know that Anderson is my #1 "fantasy" choice for a coach. To be honest, I never thought he was on our radar, or more importantly, that we were on his radar. He's a southern guy who has played, coached and lived exclusively in the south. And while he's a hot name in coaching, he doesn't tend to get the big hype in part for that reason. He's been mostly a regional guy, and not in our region.

However, I started following his coaching career when he was at UAB. I first really took note of him in 2004, when UAB beat Washington in the first round of the tournament. It was the most fun game to watch in the tourney that year, UAB won 102-100 and that was not an Overtime score. Both teams were really getting up and down the court.

Anderson is an outstanding coach, who coached under Nolan Richardson for 17 years. He took over at UAB in 2002 and won 22+ games there every year for 4 seasons. He took UAB to the NCAA tournament 3 times in those 4 years (and the NIT semi finals the other year), going as far as the Sweet Sixteen. He then rebuilt Mizzouri and went as far as the Elite 8, just last season, which was also a 31 win season.

Anderson is a good recruiter and graduates players. Ernie's tradition in the classroom would likely continue under Mike Anderson.

Most of all, Anderson is a perfect fit for our current roster. He has adopted Nolan Richardson's "40 minutes of Hell" strategy, where they play pressure defense all the time, and pick up full court. Its incredibley fun style of play to watch that emphasizes a fast pace game, and forces that on the defensive end of the floor. The make up of his team consists of a stable full of great athletes, and liberal substitutions. Our roster was recruited to do the same thing, we just didn't have a coach that knew how to do so. We even heard lip service to playing "40 feet of hell" at the beginnig of this year, if you remember.

Malcom Armstead is a prototypical Mike Anderson point guard. Teondre Williams and Jamil Wilson would be electric in his system. Garrett Sim excels in the open court, but really struggles in the half court. EJ Singler is great playing a point-forward role on the break. Humphrey, Longmire and Dunigan are all well suited for an open court style of play.

Terrence Jones and Terrence Ross, should they decide to come to Oregon, would be outstanding under Mike Anderson.

You really couldn't find a better match for our current roster than Mike Anderson.

Those who know college basketball, and Mike Anderson, will be instantly excited by this hire. For those that don't know him, they will come flocking to Mac Court when we start blasting teams and putting up 90-100 points per game in the non-conference.

If Mike Anderson opens the new arena, we are going to have a success on our hands. Our style of play in basketball will resemble the exciting style of play we have in football. Does having the most entertaining brand of football and basketball sound like something the powers that be might be interested in having?

I think so too.

Mike Anderson would be the perfect fit for Oregon basketball. The only question now is, does he see it as the right fit for him?

The Coaching Search of Diminishing Returns

So, what's the plan now? What has been the plan so far, for that matter? We got a tiny glimpse inside the process, in some stories and quotes over the past couple days, but nothing that sounds promising.

Unfortunately, time is ticking away. 6 days to go, before the spring signing period. Terrence Jones is going to wait a week longer, but time may be running out on signing him, or anybody else worthwhile, if a new coach isn't hired immediately.

It seems that the search has focused on a few names that were unlikely to come, in Dixon and Stevens. While little else has been confirmed, Kilkenny has admitted to discussions with those two. Bob Clark keeps throwing out Mike Anderson as a name, and while I'd love it to happen, he's more unrealstic than the previous two names. However, there are an awful lot of coaches that we haven't seemed to give a look to, for whatever reason.

My last post focused on Baylor's Scott Drew. He's gotten almost no attention, from day 1, but seemed like our best chance at a major conference coach, with a deep tourny run to his credit. I'm really baffled by the omission of him in this search.

The proximity to the spring signing period may now also be one more negative in the growing list of problems with this coaching search. We are the only Pac-10 school without a basketball commitment. We have, at minimum, 2 rides to give and that's assuming zero player turnover with a new coach being signed (which often is not an accurate assumption). If things stay as they are, in 2 years our new coach will lose 8 players from our huge sophomore class. These are all factors a new coach will consider, as he knows he's expected to come in and bring us success. With signing so close, will the new coach even have a realistic chance to fill our open spots (and any others that come open with player turnover) with players of the quality he will need to get the program headed in the right direction?

If Terrence Jones is one of those players, the answer is most certainly, yes. However time may be running out for him, if it hasn't already.

Factors like these may mean that coaches we could have landed a couple weeks ago, will be harder to sell on the job in the coming days and weeks. According to Kilkenny we are "not really" close to a hire at the moment.

Scott Drew, or Lon Kruger, would be our best bet to get coaches that have had success in a major conference. Both coaches are in good situations right now, and the dealys in this search are making our situation worse by the day. I'm not sure that either would leave, even given a raise, though I expect one or both may have if we'd gone at them awhile ago.

Billy Gillespie was in Beaverton yesterday, though it may have just been for the Nike Hoop Summit. A lot of fans don't want to deal with his baggage, but we may not have much choice at this point. The problem with getting a good coach at this stage, is that we need them much more than they need us. Gillespie is a very good coach that, due to his baggage, would need us as much, if not more, than we need him.

We have a couple ways we can go. Hire an unproven coach with no (known) baggage, or a proven coach with some blemishes. It would appear that hiring a proven coach with a sterling record and no issues, is out of the question for us.

Randy Bennett is still on the table, but I still really fail to get too excited about him. We may need to just bite the bullet and take him, at some point, but I just worry far too greatly about his recruiting. He relies on a connection with an Australian national team that I just don't know A) if it will last and B) how well it will translate to the Pac-10. Also, much like the other choices, believe it or not, I'm not entirely sure he'll even take the job at this point. We've drug it on too long, pushed too close to the signing period, and hindered our next coach's ability to be successful here.

PJ Carlesimo and Terry Porter keep getting mentioned. I'm completely against either one, though I suppose I'd rather have Porter, but just barely. Porter has zero college coaching experience. I don't mean head coaching experience, he has zero of any kind. Never been a college assistant, or anything. He quit playing in 2002, was an NBA assistant for only one year before taking a head coaching job. As an NBA coach, he has an under .500 record and was fired twice in only 2.5 seasons. Its a desperation hire, and we may be desperate, but I would rather take a flier on an unknown, or even assistant, from the college game than on Terry Poter.

Taking your time to get "the right" coach, rather than just any coach is a good thing...within reason. A coaching search isn't like every other job search out there and we have reached a point in which the longer it drags on the worse our coaching candidates are going to get.

I'd go after Scott Drew, now.

The latest news has Jamie Dixon signing an extension at Pitt today.

Now, I'm going to make some assumptions. Lets assume that we don't have something serious in the works with Tom Izzo or Billy Donovan. Let's assume that the movement of Gonzaga assistants means that Mark Few is staying put. Let's assume that Tubby Smith is staying at Minnesota. Let's assume that Turgeon is happy with his extension.

Well, that's pretty much depleated our list of tier 1 coaches. Other names that are, or might be, mentioned are Brad Stevens of Butler, Steve Alford of New Mexico, Randy Bennett of Saint Mary's and Scott Drew of Baylor.

This list is a huge step down from the top tier. Stevens is getting a lot of love, but I think he's a huge risk and too green (no pun intended) for our job. We are looking to take Oregon to "the next level", wherever that may be. We are coming in, guns blazing, plopping down fistfulls of cash to build the most expensive arena in the conference. We fired a fairly successfull coach by our standards, to turn our basketball program into something more along the lines of our football program, if not even bigger. Nike is an even bigger player in the basketball world and we'll be putting that connection out there, for the world to see, like we have been for football.

Brad Stevens is 33 years old. He's coached for 3 years, at any level. He's, undeniabley done an outstanding job, but is he really ready to step up to this level? Consider this...He grew up in a tiny town in Indiana ( population 8,700). He played ball at DePauw University (enrollment 2,400). He then started as an assistant at Butler (enrollment 4,000) at age 23 and has been there ever since. He was handed Butler in an already good situation, and has done a great job with it.

I think its an awful tough task to ask him to take over an operation the scale that we are asking him to. I also have serious doubts about him even being all that interested in the job, given his current situation.

Steve Alford has a track record similar to Ernie's. You could even consider it worse, depending on your point of view. It doesn't have the lows that Kent did, but it also doesn't have the highs. In 8 years at Iowa he only went to the tournament 3 times, and only won 1 game there. He finished in 2nd place once, in 4th place twice and in the bottom half of the conference the other 5 seasons. He had only 3 seasons with a .500 or better conference record.

Randy Bennett has done a good job at Saint Mary's. He's done even better than Ernie did there. However, he's relied entirely on recruiting Australian players and I really question how he will recruit at Oregon. Also, his last game was a flat out embarrasment in that loss to Baylor. I know its only one game, but to flop that badly in the tournament (even the Sweet Sixteen) makes you wonder. Ernie came from Saint Mary's as well, and its definitely not an exciting hire. I just don't think you fire Ernie and replace him with either Alford or Bennett.

That leaves Scott Drew. The negative with Drew is that it took him quite awhile to get going at Baylor. He inherited a really horrid program and his first 4 seasons were all losers. His last 3, however, have all been been 20 game winners, culminating in this year's elite 8 run. He plays up-tempo ball. He's doing it in a major conference. He recruits well. His bigs are agressive and dunk the ball when they're near the rim. He's really built Baylor from the ground up into a fine looking program, and one that's really fun to watch. He comes from a good basketball family, with ties all over the country, and I think if you give him the new arena he's got the most upside of the remaining candidates.

Now, perhaps one of our first choices will still take the job. Its far from unheard of for guys to leave, even shortly after signing extensions. All we can do, from the sidelines, is make wild guesses based on all the misleading information that's out there. If we are, where we appear to be, with this search, Scott Drew is the guy I would want us to get.

KEZI says Tubby Smith is not a candidate.

A U of O source has apparently told KEZI that Tubby Smith is not a candidate and has not been contacted. kohd.com/page/167831

If the reports are all true, it has to make you wonder about what is going on with the search.

Donovan is reportedly out. Few is reportedly out. Turgeon is reportedly out. Smith is reportedly not being looked at. Kilkenny has stated that he believes we will have a coach hired before the Final Four, which would mean that Scott Drew and Brad Stevens are not in the running (they are both still playing). The options would appear to be getting more limited by the day.

Of course we don't know who is truly on their short list. But the short list of "name" coaches we might be after doesn't go much further than those mentioned above, plus Jamie Dixon, who most would consider a long shot.

Donovan rumors running rampant.

It seems unlikely on the surface, but the rumors of Billy Donovan being offerred the Oregon job are heating up. I suppose it can't hurt to try.

I will say that hiring Donovan fits in perfectly for what we are trying to accomplish moving forward. We are basically trying to turn our basketball program into what our football program has become.

The Nike connection has helped us tremendously in football, and Nike is even a bigger player in basketball than it is in football. Really, we've failed to capitalize on that connection in basketball like we probably should have. The ancient Mac Court was probably the biggest stumbling block in that.

Next year we will have the best facilities in the Pac-10, and certainly one of the top in the nation. Like we do with our uniform changes in football, you can expect to see us pushing our Nike connection out there for the hoops world soon too. And that begins with this coaching hire.

Billy Donovan? A young coach with 2 national titles, and a 3rd trip to the championship game? He recruits like mad, likes to play up tempo and would seriously jump start this program in a big way.

I'm very skeptical that he would take the job, but it does sound like he is seriously getting an offer. He's already the 3rd highest paid coach in college basketball, so one conclusion you can draw, whether he accepts or not is that Killkenny and Knight are willing to pay big money for a coach.

Goodbye, Ernie!

There's been a lot of parting shots taken at Ernie over the past few weeks and months out in cyberspace. And its been completely unneccessary, as his fate has been sealed for quite some time. Ernie did a good job here and should be thanked for his time on the way out the door, not berated about not living up to my personal expecations during the last years of his tenure.

I was a student, at U of O, 13 years ago when Ernie replaced Jerry Green. If you asked any Duck fan then, if we'd take the results of the last 13 seasons, we would have enthusiastically said yes.

Consistancy was a problem, and the reason that he's no longer our coach. But here's what he accomplished while here.

1 Pac-10 regular season title:
Arizona, Stanford and UCLA each had more. Cal & UW each had 1 also.

2 Pac-10 tournament titles:
Tied for the most with UCLA and Washington

2 trips to the Elite 8:
Arizona and UCLA have done better. Tied with Stanford for 3rd.

Recruited 4 McDonald's All Americans
Produced 4 1st round draft picks
Top APR in the conference and top 10 nationally

All of these, with the possible exception of the APR (which didn't even exist) would have been thought practically impossible at Oregon when I was a student.

The program he was building outgrew him, but there's no shame in that and Duck fans shouldn't take it as if personal injury had been done to them. He coached here one year too long, but he took Oregon basketball to hieghts we didn't think possible a decade ago and paved the way for us to have an even brighter future.

Ernie's last 2 seasons have been failures that cost him his job. However, the Ernie Kent era was a huge success and should be thought of as such as we move on without him.

Goodbye Ernie, and Thanks!

Following Oregon's coaching candidates in the tournament.

For those of you, like me, that don't get any work done come tournament time each year, here are some games that might be of interest to Duck fans. Some of these candidates are, obviously, much more likely than others, but these are the names that we have been rumored to be either going after, or looking at.

Game Times Pacific

Jay Wright
#2 Villanova vs. #15 Robert Morris - Thurs. - 9.30

Scott Drew
#3 Baylor vs. #14 Sam Houston - Thurs. 11:45

Randy Bennett
#10 Saint Mary's vs. #7 Richmond - Thurs. 11:50

Lon Kruger
#8 UNLV vs #9 Northern Iowa - Thurs. 4:10

Steve Alford
#3 New Mexico vs. #14 Montana - Thurs. 6:40

Jamie Dixon
#3 Pitt vs. #14 Oakland - Fri. 11:45

Mark Turgeon
#5 Texas A&M vs. #12 Utah St. - Fri. 1:45

Mark Few
#8 Gonzaga vs. #9 Florida St. - Fri. 4:10

New Pac-10 Record!

Congratz to Tajuan Porter, the Pac-10's All Time Three point leader!

I'm on the Few bandwagon.

An article in today's Register Guard talks about the AD getting ready to open up the checkbook for a coaching hire, specifically mentioning that Few might be the top target.

I hope that's the case, and that Few accepts. Its funny how things can change. A few years ago, every Duck fan was on the replace-Ernie-with-Few bandwagon and I was not sold on him. Now, many Duck fans are starting to look past Few to other targets, and I have come around to the idea.

My very top choice isn't happening. Mike Anderson. He's a great coach, but he might not even be the best fit even if there was interest (which there's not). But, I just love the way they play.

And I still believe that Few's the best fit and the perfect choice. There's a couple other guys I'd be happy with, Turgeon among those. But I think Few is really the guy we are looking for.

Basketball-wise, its somewhat of a crap shoot no matter who you get. Everybody always likes to speak in absolutes and hyperbole, but nobody really knows how a coach is going to do at any given job until they get there. So there are arguments both for and against him, on the court (as there are for every coach).

Looking at the negatives...

He's been in the tournament a ton, and never taken his team past the Sweet Sixteen. This is a legitimate concern. We are replacing Ernie, who has gone to the Elite 8 twice, and expecting to get better. Can Few get deeper into the tournament? While I do feel this is a valid concern, most of our choices out there aren't going to have coached in the Elite 8.

He took over a program in great shape and has really maintained it, rather than built it himself. I don't think this concern holds much weight for a few reasons. First, we aren't asking him to do a rebuild. Yes, we've been at, or near, the bottom of the Pac-10 for 2 seasons. But we are only 2 seasons removed from the tournament, 3 seasons removed from the Elite 8, and have a roster full of talented (though raw) players.

In fact, I think you could easily take the other side of that position and frame it as a positive. Love him or hate him, Ernie was not a bad program builder. We are in much better shape than when he took over. He built and rebuilt Elite 8 teams here twice. What ultimately got Ernie fired was being unable to maintain any kind of consistancy once there. While not taking over a program that had just reached the elite 8 the year prior, like he did with Gonzaga, this situation is much closer to that, than it is to a rebuild.

I would also consider that Ernie recent pattern with his young players has been a couple years down, followed by 2 up years. Its not altogether improbable that, even had he returned, next year isn't about to hit that up-cycle anyway. Dunigan, Humphrey, Sim, Williams, Crittle, Wiley, Armstead and Jacob will be all upperclassmen (yes, time flies). Singler and Wilson were nice contributers as freshmen and next year is not nearly as bleak as this year looked.

We can find questions, answers and arguments about all of our coaching choices similar to the ones above. Where Few really seperates himself from the rest of the field would be in longevity. If he's interested in coming to Oregon, you'd have to believe its for the long haul. He's not an NBA coach. He's a local guy. He's turned down bigger opportunities than Oregon for years at Gonzaga. This would be his last stop.

I don't think you can say that about any other hire. Many of the names on the list might bolt after only a couple good seasons. Like I said, I do think that its possible we are poised to break-out next year. How would we like a young coach to come in, get us to the tournament the following 2 years, get all kinds of praise for taking over a 9th place team and getting them to the dance (even though Ernie did that twice), and then watch him bolt for greener pastures.

I'm not a fan of the coaching carousel. We're fortunate, at Oregon to have had some long timers recently. We had Bellotti for 14 years and Ernie for 13 years. Planning to stay at Oregon is high on my list of desires out of the next coach.

So, I'm out front trumpetting for Few to be the hire.

9th place eeked out. TP, 5 threes back of the record.

Not that its any suprise, but reports have been out all weekend stated that Ernie has been fired. I'll talk more about that and my thoughts on coaching replacements in another post.

For now, the only real interesting thing left is to see if Tajuan is going to break the Pac-10 all time record for 3 pointers. Right now, he's 4 back of Salim Stoudamire's mark, needing 5 to break the record.

Getting 2 games in the Pac-10 tournament would help his chances, rather than needing to make 5 against the Coogs. And we get an immediate rematch against the last place Coogs on Wednesday. It can be tough to beat a team 3 times in a season, but if this season showed anything, its that we seem to just match up better with a few teams, going 6-0 against WSU, USC and UCLA and 1-11 against the rest of the conference.

Its hard to be excited about a rematch against the Coogs, probably for either team, and for either players or fans. And you can expect nobody to be there, considering there is only 1 play-in game this year, due to USC's postseason ban.

You'd like to see them have a little success there, though with a new coach coming in, and a new system, its hard to say that it would really matter all that much. To be honest, I just want to see Tajuan break the record. I'd expect his teamates to be looking for him often.

Well, that should do it.

We are now assured of playing in the Pac-10 tournament play-in game, against either Stanford or WSU. A win tommorow is meaningless, other than keeping us out of 10th place. As I said a few weeks ago, it was looking like WSU or us for last place and, sure enough it comes down to this final game to decide who's the ultimate loser.

The Pac-10 is horrendous this year and finishing at the bottom should all but assure that tommorow is Ernie's last game coaching at Mac Court. There may have been the slimmest of chances that he would remain, after last week's sweep in southern California, but those chances went out the window last night.

After the first half, it looked like the team might actually be capable of pulling off the win. And, to point out just how poor the conference is this year, had we won, coupled with a win tommorow( over the team that shares last place with us) might have put us as high as 5th place in the conference. So yeah, there was a chance he'd stay on, before the second half meltdown.

It should be an interesting month.

Mike Bellotti and Ernie Kent coached at Oregon for a combined 27 seasons, and both will be replaced about a year apart. It will be interesting to see where this new age for Oregon athletics takes us.

Tajuan shoots himself back in the chase

Well, it looked like a near impossibility heading into the weekend, but Tajuan is right back in the chase for the all time Pac-10 3 point mark. His 7 threes today puts him at 334, 8 behind Salim Stoudamire, with a minimum of 3 games to play. Still, he needs to shoot it better than he has most of conference play, but 2 or 3 per game is at least in reach.

Some more interesting thoughts and numbers:

The win puts the Ducks back at .500 for the season at 14-14. 1 of only 6 Pac-10 teams that are .500 or better in this down season.

The Ducks have swept 2 road trips. The only Pac-10 team to do so.

The Ducks have won 4 road games total. Only ASU has done better, with 5 road wins. No matter what happens in our final 2, we can't finish with a better home record than road record.

Last place is much less of a forgone conclusion after this weekend. We will still be tied for last (pending the outcomes of OSU@USC and UW@WSU), but the bottom half teams are now all within a game of each other. Both OSU and WSU have the same number of wins as us. Whichever of them lose will be tied at the bottom. And of course, OSU/WSU/Oregon all play next week which will likely settle last place.


The loser of Arizona/Stanford (as I type this a 2 point game in the second half) will also have only 7 wins after this weekend. Stanford has only Cal left, and Arizona has the SoCal schools at home.

There could be a big log-jam at the bottom of the conference after next week, delving into tiebreakers to decide who plays in the play-in games.

Last win at USC was 2006

Not much of a meaningfull game for either team, and it was a very ugly game. Typical for USC this year, they've been playing the uglyiest, lowest scoring games in the conference all year.

But it was nice to get a win, and a road win at that. We now have 3 road wins to only 2 home wins and at least have managed to break a couple strings of losses. We hadn't won at USC since 2006. Our win at Washington earlier was the first since 2002.

If you're wondering, we haven't won at UCLA since 2003. UCLA's a bit banged up, and not very good to begin with, so who knows? maybe they'll be another streak broken tommorow.

We are closing with games against the 4 teams we beat in the first half of the season, so perhaps we simply match up better with these teams.

There are some really bad overall records in the Pac-10 this year. Only 5 teams with winning records at this point

UCLA 13-14
Arizona 13-14
Stanford 13-15
Oregon State 12-15
Oregon 13-14

1 or 2 of these teams might get to .500. But, maybe not.

Washington State is the only shot at a better than last place finish.

In a year which the Pac-10 is as bad, if not the worst, that its ever been we are solidifying ourselves at the bottom. Alone in last place after last night's performance, the last chance we have at "rising" out of the cellar is if Washington State can join us there. We got the win at their place, and a half game ahead of us, they look to be the only team we have a chance to catch in the closing weeks of the season.

A win or two from them will set them apart, even if we do manage to beat them head to head, but they've been nearly as bad as us lately, losing 6 of their last 7 games, mostly double digit blowouts.

So, if you're rooting for a 9th place finish, root against the Coogs.

We couldn't do much to beat the 9th place team at home last night, so it might be a futile hope anyway.

Swept by our last three.

The start to the second half of conference play has gone as bad as possible. We are playing worse now than we were to start conference play and the last 3 teams to paste us have now swept the season series against us.

With Stanford and Cal coming to Mac Court this week, it will be interesting to see how much, or how little, this team cares about things anymore. Stanford shares the Pac-10 basement with us and is the "easiest" game left on our schedule. Lose that one and an 0-fer second half is a real possibility.

Tajuan did move into 2nd place on the Pac-10 career 3 point leaders list, for what it's worth. With him needing 18 more and probably only 7 games left, first place is becoming unlikely.

Talk about vastly different expectations.

You've got to love quotes like this one, from the Oregonian, about Oregon and Oregon State.

"The Beavers are a solid, competitive program right now that just swept the Ducks, who are floundering."

OSU is right with us, at 4-6 in the Pac-10, with an even worse overall record at 10-12. OSU's ability to beat Oregon head to head doesn't make them either solid or competitive right now. They've lost 4 of their last 6 games, are just 1 month removed from a 50+ point beating at the hands of Seattle U (in their first season of division 1 basketball), and now half of their Pac-10 win total is over a hapless Oregon team.

The Oregonian article is titled, "There's a clear difference between Oregon State and Oregon", and it goes on to detail why OSU is superior and headed in the right direction.

The title of the article is apt, though not for the "analysis" given inside it. There is a clear difference and that difference is expectations. Because OSU isn't better than Oregon right now, despite the result on the court. Which is not to say that Oregon is any better than them this year either. Oregon isn't better than Washington, Washington State, UCLA or USC either, despite beating those 4 teams. Both Oregon teams are among the most pathetic teams in a pathetic league. OSU has scoreboard.

OSU somehow got worse from last year, despite losing very little from their team, and fans and writers are happy with it. Oregon is likely going to fire the coach after this poor season. The difference between the 2 is that OSU is happy to be among the pathetic, while Oregon won't stand for it long.

So, I hope to continue to see articles lambasting the Ducks for their failure and praising the Beavers for their failure, because that does highlight the difference between the two programs.

Huge Shot Humphrey

The Rockets, Lakers and Spurs know Robert Horry as "Big Shot Bob". Late in his career he barely played in the regular season, didn't do a lot even when he did play, except make game changing 3 pointers late in games. So, perhaps we ought to call Matt, "Huge Shot Humphrey".

In Matt Humphrey's short career, he's spent a lot of time injured, and had some up and down performances. He hasn't scored all that much, but his ratio of big shots to total points is insanely high. Against UCLA he took over in the final minutes and overtime. And last night, with USC closing the gap in the second half, Matt hit back to back threes to stretch our lead out to 8.

If you remember last season, he also hit game tying, go ahead, and final dagger, shots in both of our 2 conference wins against Oregon State and Stanford.

Its really too bad about his injury, because I think he can become a great player for us. And he's shown the ability to step up in the clutch, which is simply something you often can't teach or develop. You've either got it, or you don't.

Other than some passing issues, we played well yesterday. We were very sloppy passing the ball, which was extremely frustrating. We should have put them away many times, but we just handed them the ball multiple times for wide open break away buckets. One on none fast breaks don't happen usually but once a game, or so. Yesterday, USC got about 5 of them on terrible decisions and lazy passes (from both the pass itself, and the recipient not coming to the ball).

Jacob has quietly been coming on of late, with a peak yesterday of 19 points, leading in scoring. Armstead really looks for Jacob and gets him some easy buckets down low. You can see how comfortable they are together and Jacob's got some ability in the post. He's not the same presence than Dunigan is, especially defensively or on the boards. His post game is different, as he isn't able to go up over defenders, but he can he hit the short jumpers that aren't a part of Mike's arsenal yet.

4-5, after the first half of conference play, is still a big disappointment. The Pac-10 is very down this year. After a 2-0 start, on the road, we should have been no worse than 6-3 with any kind of halfway decent play. That 5 game stretch killed any realistic chance of post season play, short of winning the Pac-10 tournament.

8 Pac-10 teams have 4 or 5 conference wins (and losses), with only Cal and Oregon State bucking the trend, in first and last place respectively. It looks like there's going to be a bunch of teams with 8-10 conference wins. The Pac-10 tournament is going to be brutal, this year, with everybody fighting for a shot at the tournament. And you can't count count, almost, anybody out of winning it.