Charles Fischer

We got to keep the 'MO going, and this hurts their progress. So...let's take it out on the Huskies!

I have to think that this has never happened to one school between both genders. What a weekend for the Ducks!

David, this is a GREAT point I had not thought of, and I would suggest it is damaging for teams trying to prepare for a bowl game AND recruit to the early signing date, usually around December 15th. I'll bet the coaches would tell us that the early signing date has made it harder for them, not easier. Add the major point that you brought up of coaches being fired or moving to another school and now the negatives are piling up over the positives? Great stuff to ponder--thanks.

Hard Pass. He had his chance, and we do not have the scholarships to spare.

On Rivals...it shows NO other schools recruiting him? We are the only offer? On 247 it shows offers from only Arizona State, Hawaii and Fresno State? That's not good.

Or...as fans we can not think about it at all. I am only paying attention at a surface level in order to retain my intense fanhood and keep from going crazy.

Wow! This would be incredible!

If true...this is not a good look for Oregon, and I would not want it to over-shadow all the good that Coach Graves has done. Fireworks After Arizona Women’s Basketball Loss at Oregon Play Out on Twitter by K Doss of Arizona Desert Swarm

EUGENE, Ore. – After scoring a career-high 28 points at USC and leading the Ducks to consecutive road wins over AP top-five opponents, senior guard Will Richardson has been named Pac-12 Player of the Week, the conference announced Monday. Richardson started the week with 10 points, three rebounds, two assists and a steal in the two-point win over Oregon State on Monday, Jan. 10 in Corvallis. On Thursday, head coach Dana Altman won his 700th career game when Oregon defeated No. 3 UCLA 84-81 in overtime. Richardson’s regulation minutes were limited after four quick fouls, but he contributed 16 points and came up huge down the stretch. Oregon outscored UCLA 11-8 in overtime, with Richardson scoring five of the Ducks 11 points. The Bruins became the highest ranked team ever beaten by the Ducks on the road. The senior guard capped the historic weekend with a career-best 28 points on a career-high-tying nine field goals at USC. Richardson started four-of-four from long range and scored 19 points in the first half. He finished five-of-eight from distance and added four assists to help Oregon win wire-to-wire, leading by nine points or more throughout the second half. Oregon became the first team since Clemson in 1975-76 to beat AP top-five teams in consecutive games and the first team in Pac-12 history to win consecutive regular season games against AP top-ten teams. Oregon has now won five games in a row, with Richardson averaging 19.8 points (.548 FG%, .519 3FG%), 3.8 rebounds, 3.4 assists and 1.4 steals per game in that span. It is the second weekly honor of Richardson’s career; he has earned the distinction in two of the last three weeks. The first came on Jan. 3 after Richardson scored a then-career-high 26 points in the victory over Utah on New Year’s Day.

It is natural that there will be some bad-blood developed with so many good teams in one conference, and when players leave your team to join another. Perhaps Graves isn't pleased with out-right recruiting of his players? Yet he has done pretty well by USC players transferring. But I am guessing... Let's hope it was just a rumor.

I remember Chip saying that he had the assistant coaches talk with the teachers of the recruit's classes, the Guidance Counselor, and most of all....the Janitor! He said that the Janitor sees students when "they are real" and can attest to what kind of person they are. So perhaps instead of having the assistant coaches do that interviewing with so many people...it is off-loaded to the Analyst staff? Just guessing.

Going into the final week--it seemed that MOST of the league still had a chance at the Playoffs, and as it is....isn't nearly a third of the teams IN the Playoffs when you count the Wild-Cards? That would point to a 32 team playoff if CFB were to adopt a similar percentage. Rarely can an NFL franchise stay on top forever as Alabama has, because they have built parity into the system. And yes, it is primarily a passing league, but it is still very entertaining. A team that was 3-5 during the season got hot to make the Playoffs and beat a highly regarded team last night. I do not like all that the NFL has done or represents, but I have to salute them for the exciting product they have created. It was fun to see Arik Armstead get a sack last night.

Gentlemen....we are driving ourselves crazy by over-thinking this, and I am guilty of this as much as anyone. The truly profound changes will not be evident for a while, and I believe we have a three-year window to enjoy Oregon football before it all descends into minor-league NFL. So, I am not going to stick my head in a hole, but I am not going to obsess too much over the changes. I will have plenty of time after three years to think about the "Good-Ol'-Days" and I do need to soak up Oregon Football and sports while I can. That is my fantasy, and I'm sticking to it!

He can meet with high school coaches and administrators? Just guessing, as I thought the same as you.

I noticed that it was different as well. I think the font style is different, and I hope to learn more today in an online meeting..

Oregon coaching staff putting on the full-court press right after Florence's visit to USC....From the left; Coach Demetrice "Meat" Martin, Coach Tosh Lupoi, Jahlil Florence, Coach Dan Lanning, Gracen Halton, a DE commit in San Diego, and Coach Matt Powledge

Can the Women complete the perfect Basketball UPSET Weekend? And watch for the female TALL FIRS line-up of Sabally, 6'5", Prince 6'7" and Kyei at 6'8"! I salute Kelly Graves for trying it as it worked against Arizona...

A replacement for Travis Dye perhaps....

Seems to me that he could be attracted back to his alma-mater, but there are better candidates... Potential Candidates to Fill UH Football Head Coaching Vacancy Following Todd Graham’s Sudden Resignation by Christian Shimabuku of khon2 Sports Tony Tuioti when he was at Hawaii...

If it works the way I hope...it will make us all appear more intelligent than this Beaver fan...

hokieduck....great to have you join us, and yes, I use the term, 'Natty, often. Tell us your story...are you in West Virginia and both VT and Duck fan?

Hello My FishDuck Friends, Have you ever noticed how when you published your reply you had a large space on the bottom, and now it is gone? Or you had seven straight lines of text, and now it is neatly spaced and easy to read? Or had line-after-line of one sentence paragraphs that are now bunched into paragraphs? That was not an automatic function happening, as I was editing your post. I estimate I've edited at least 200 posts over time, and I suspect that number is much higher. It only takes a few seconds, and since people would not do it... Why Would I Do That? It is all about the reading experience, as I want this forum to be the easiest to read anywhere. Part of that is removing the Trolls, but it is also in how posts are aligned. --When there are huge spaces at the bottom of a post...this means that everyone has to scroll longer to get to a new post. Very many of those "big-bottom" posts extends a thread a long way, and people don't like scrolling that much. --When we have more than three straight lines of text...it is hard to read. Studies of web behavior show that when it is continuous text without reading/paragraph spaces--people just skip it and don't read your post. --When people write more than four straight one-sentence paragraphs--that also becomes hard to read and the readers will check out after four or five lines or skip the entire post. Bunching the sentences into paragraphs makes it easier to read for everyone. We are Working on Automating it For You... You may have noticed how the posts are starting to look different, and this is evidence of the Web Developer working on the code to incorporate what I want into the posts automatically, since people are reluctant to change, and I don't want to do post editing the rest of my life. You will see us working on this over the next week, and some changes are there already. I am open to feedback, and that can occur in the replies here or email charles@fishduck.com if you have some extreme negative. This is ALL About Making it Easier for Everyone to Read Posts No other board has rules as we do, (The Forum with Decorum) and the results have been wonderful. I often have to strain my eyes when reading at other forums at how the sentences or posts are aligned, and found myself skipping posts where it is too hard, or frankly takes any effort at all. And what I just described is the current web behavior.... So I wish to break new ground because we have thousands of people who come in here...simply to read the news and the posts that comment on the news. I am taking into account documented web behavior and human nature to attempt an automated process that happens naturally after you publish a post. Please be patient with the changes, and know that I am going to great trouble and expense for the benefit of everyone. My thanks, Charles Bear with me as we are all weird in our own way...

Richardson hit some cold-blooded threes when we needed it, and it reminded me of when Payton Pritchard would do that. I was stunned at how bad this team was playing, and now I'm stunned at how they have improved. It seems that everyone knows their role better and are giving it their all. Nice to see Franck have a little offense in addition to his thunderous blocks.

(So you see the Official Press Release) LOS ANGELES — The Oregon men’s basketball team completed a historic road sweep against back-to-back top-five opponents on Saturday night, leading from start to finish in a dominant 79-69 win over No. 5 USC at the Galen Center. Two days after defeating No. 3 UCLA in overtime to secure the 700th career win for head coach Dana Altman, the Ducks (11-6, 4-2 Pac-12) built a 16-point halftime lead behind 50.0 percent shooting from the field and 47.6 percent from three-point range to give the Trojans just their second loss of the season. Oregon is the first Pac-12 team ever to sweep a conference road trip vs. two top-10 ranked teams, and the Ducks earned wins over top-five opponents in back-to-back games for the first time in program history. UO had defeated a top-five conference team on the road just once in its history prior to this weekend, a victory at No. 5 UCLA on Feb. 21, 1976. “We needed a big week,” Altman said. “We know that, and our guys knew that. I’ve been talking about a sense of urgency since before the Baylor game; we can’t bury ourselves any further. We still don’t have any room for error. We have to bring it every night and that sense of urgency is going to have to come every night. “We needed it. We needed something to jumpstart us. Three road wins this week, and now we go home, and we’re going to have our hands full at home. We’ve got to get back and get better. The exciting thing is I still think we have so much room to grow.” How It Happened: After a hot shooting finish to beat the Bruins on Thursday, the Ducks picked up where they left off by going 7-of-11 (63.6%) from three-point range and 17-of-30 (56.7%) from the floor in the first half Saturday to lead 45-29 at halftime. Will Richardson led the way with 19 first-half points while going 4-of-4 from beyond the arc, including a pair of triples in the final three minutes. The Ducks led 32-27 with four minutes left in the half before finishing on a 13-2 run, ignited by five straight Richardson points. Eric Williams Jr. made it a 12-point Oregon lead with a steal and breakaway dunk, and Richardson hit a three with 44 seconds left before Williams beat the buzzer with a deep three to put Oregon up by 16. De’Vion Harmon joined Richardson in double figures in the first half with 10 points, and N’Faly Dante started the night 3-of-3 from the floor for six points. The Ducks converted eight USC turnovers into 14 points in the first half. The Ducks cooled down in the second half while getting outscored 40-34, but USC was unable to get closer than nine points as Oregon finished off an unprecedented road sweep in Los Angeles. Back-to-back buckets by Richardson and Dante gave UO its largest lead of the night at 18 points in the first three minutes of the second half, and a lay-in by Jacob Young made it 55-37 a couple minutes later. Oregon led by 15 with 6:24 to play when USC went on a 6-0 run to make it a nine-point game, but Richardson got the Ducks’ lead back to 14 with a pair of free throws and a triple. Oregon led by double digits the rest of the way to finish off the upset victory. The Ducks converted 13 total USC turnovers on the night into 22 points, and Oregon finished with 15 fast break points. Who Stood Out: Richardson powered the Ducks with a career-high 28 points, matching his career-highs for both made field goals (9) and three-pointers (5). The senior added four rebounds, four assists, and two steals. Harmon went 6-of-11 from the field for 16 points, and Dante shot 6-of-7 for 12 points while leading the team with seven boards. Young had eight points and four assists, and Williams finished with eight points and three rebounds. Franck Kepnang was huge defensively with a career-high four blocks. What It Means: After falling to 6-6 with an eight-point loss to No. 1 Baylor on December 18, the Ducks have now won five in a row and have new life on the season after knocking off back-to-back top-five conference opponents. According to ESPN Stats and Info, Oregon is the first team to beat two AP top-five teams on the road in a five-day span since Clemson in the 1975-76 season. “Our guys are just playing harder,” Altman said. “I wish I could act like we invented something here, but we’re just playing so much harder than what we were. I don’t know if that’s just guys coming together, but the leadership is definitely part of it. “I just think we’re playing a lot better because we’re playing harder." Up Next: The Ducks host Washington State on Thursday, Jan. 20, at 6:30 p.m. PT in Matthew Knight Arena. The game will be televised on Pac-12 Network.

Nope. You are helping some of us better rationalize our unfounded, unbridled, and uncontrolled enthusiasm for the future.