spartan2785

I think at this point, when you look at all the programs to not have won a national title, Oregon is probably the most prominent at this point, it's now been about 30 years that they've been a good to great program, having said that, I actually agree with the writer of that article. A&M is probably the most underachieving program in the country for the last 40 or so years, it's been barely a blimp on the radar of not only being a national player but simply fighting for a conference title, this despite having 100,000+ stadium, huge donors, a recruiting bed that is as good as it gets, yet cannot get any traction on being a consistent 8-9 win team. You would have thought they would have at least stumbled into a good coach at some point since Slocum was there, they haven't even had a coach who was good enough to get snatched up by someone else, it's just been disappointing hire after disappointing hire, pretty amazing.

I don't play video games like I used to when I was growing up or into my 20s, but I'm tempted to start playing again just for this, spent a lot of hours in the recruiting hub trying to assemble the top recruiting class, love that series so much, I don't think some people understand how much this is was a part of my generation's fandom.

Incredibly frustrating year, the injury bug has become a joke now, three straight seasons ruined by injuries to key players. Two starters from the opening game gone, key center misses half the season, key 6 man gone, 2/3 of a great freshman class missing significant time, just an incredibly unfortunate series of injuries to this team. Anyone saying that it might be time to look at Altman I think has to realize how hard it is to coach when you are consistently having to change the lineup because you have yet another injury, if anything it should be the training staff that gets a look at.

I'll be honest, I actually like that ESPN is going to handle the playoffs since I really don't like the commentators that Fox has, really could use not having Gus Johnson screaming into the mike constantly. In general I just like their broadcasts more than Fox, though I do like Joel Klatt.

Super interesting move. The most pure talent he's had to work with in comparison to other teams since he was at Oregon. He doesn't have to recruit as much, he can simply be a guru there, he's working with a former player, I could see it going extremely well. If I was Day would choose Kelly over Stein since it's a different situation than the one here. Lanning though is better with Stein (or Dillingham if he was still here) than bring in a guy like Kelly.

I've just made peace with myself, that we won't be consistent enough to make a real push, that UCLA game kind of killed it for me, to come back in the first half, and then get beat over over again on a simple pick and roll was depressing. There are some exciting pieces for the future, but I just don't see anymore a way to make a push this year.

I know a lot of people like to bag on Wilcox in here, but he's a good coach imo (for Cal I mean), he's going to win some games at home nobody thinks they should, could be a sleeper in the ACC with that QB.

3 1/2 I would say, if I had to bet I would say they go 8-4. I think they lose at Florida, at Cal, at Louisville, and home to Va Tech. Plenty of other games they could lose (at Ga Tech, FSU, Duke)

NBA is more luck than any other professional sport, you have to have a MVP candidate to win, and unless you are in a huge city, you basically have to luck into a superstar. I don't think there are many cases of franchise just being better in terms of scouting or coaching, there are a couple, but mostly it's either be located in a major media center, or luck into a superstar in the draft. NFL, MLB, NHL all have degree of being able to win without having the best player in the game, NBA, it usually come down to your stars being better than the other teams stars. It's the most individualist sport out of the major sports by far. So I basically have the same hope for the Blazers, that they luck into a superstar and a star in the draft, unlikely but that's the basically the only hope.

It will never happen, but if they brought back hand-checking it would make the game better, you would be able to actually play physical defense, nowadays you breath on a star player and it's gets called as a foul, the game needs to become a lot more physical if it wants to become a better product. I'm sure the NBA though doesn't want this since they love being able to talk about stars going for 60+ points, or games being in the 130+. Like others I used to love the Blazers, I liked the BRoy and Lilliard eras, and now I'm pretty much just looking at box scores to see how the young guys are doing, I might get back into watching them once they start to show that there is a slight hope again. There is so much wrong with the NBA today, you don't have rivalries, all the players are best friends with each other, players are able to move teams on a dime since they have all the power now, players are more entitled than any other sport, no loyalty, just a bunch of whiners who would never survive back in the 80s or 90s when real tough guys played. College basketball is still watchable though not nearly as good as just 10 years ago due to the portal, but the NBA is such a shell of the game 25-30 years ago.

Well I guess I spoke too soon, horrible horrible loss, probably have to win the tourney now, I don't really know how you can absolutely choke like that, absolutely pathetic defense in the second half, it does help though when the refs decide they're going to take over the game and call everything on one team and nothing on the other.

Not liking the second half though, I don't know why we have decided we don't need to defend the elbow jumper, every single time we just let them shoot it completely open. Horrible defense in the second half.

Great comeback in the first half, tough to have such a delay getting to the game, it appears it affected the Ducks, then a furious comeback to lead at halftime, shows a lot of character. I like Dana using the small lineup when Dante isn't in the game, we probably unfortunately for Bittle need to lean into Evans as the backup 5, we just seem to do better with that smaller lineup. We're beginning to understand how to play with Dante, we aren't force feeding him the ball quite as much (still had some questionable decisions with entry passes, but getting better). Character building half.

I think Altman's record prior to the final four trip shows that he's on a very short list of coaches out there, he got Oregon, Creighton, and Kansas St. teams to play above their talent level. We've just been decimated by injuries that haven't allowed us to really practice at all with the entire group, it's hard to insert guys when they don't have much experience playing together. Even prior to the season we were injured and that's how it's been for three season now. I think we've just played much tougher opponents than UW or WSU or any of the other teams we played during that winning streak, teams also have film on Shelsted and have a plan against him now.

Hey Charles, I hope you didn't take this topic as a criticism of this site, I really do like posting on here, I just wanted to see what people thought, and I guess I just wish people weren't soooooo focused on football, I definitely fall into the vast vast vassstttttt majority of people who's first interest is college football. I guess for myself it would be Football 100% Men's Basketball 90% Women's Basketball 60% (probably was 80% during the Sabrina years) Baseball 60% (would be more if I had the time) Softball 40% (again would be more if I had the time) Volleyball 40% (again I just have too many things going on) Other sports 10%. I will keep tabs and see scores, but I just have so many other teams and personal stuff going on that I don't watch pretty much anything else unless it gets to a championship level.

Feels like just a matter of time now that Graves loses his job after we go 3-15 in league, can't see much else in terms of a final record, might get 5 wins total if they get a couple upsets.

I want to emphasize I am not criticizing anyone on here, I'm also not criticizing those that starts threads on the any number of topics that are out there, I'm only trying to gauge interest in other people's view of sports. I also understand that the amount of football threads is pretty consistent with a lot of boards, both Oregon and other universities. Still it's sort of interesting to me that we have a basketball team who is decent (not great but decent), and we seem to have very little interest from the people on this board, we have some who post on it, but most seem to be more interested in talking about UW football, the Chargers getting Harbaugh, transition to the B1G for football, or transfers. I guess my question for those here is how much interest do you have in other Duck sports? Do you try to catch most or all of the basketball games? How much do you pay attention in the spring (baseball/softball). I know that I don't get to watch as much baseball as I would hope since I coach baseball and I'm usually at practice or a game when they play. Men's basketball I'm able to watch more of, I would say I catch about 80% of the games (either going to Matt Court or on TV). I certainly used to watch/go to more women's basketball as well, but I totally admit that program has lost my interest since their decent into the bottom of the Pac-12. Football will always be king, it gets the most clicks, it's why we have pay sites that cover things like recruiting I get all that, but it is interesting how little people seem to post about basketball. It probably helps that spring football is a thing where so that it I also want to acknowledge that I could probably stand to post more topics if I feel like there is something to talk about.

Yeah, I get that, I think it's a catch 22, without Dante I think we get absolutely obliterated inside by all the teams we've played post WSU bar ASU, all of those teams have bigs who I think would have really caused us problems. Bello today I think would have dominated inside if we didn't have Dante, so it's pick your poison. In the future I think Altman does his best work with a springy defensive focused post in the mold of Bell/Wooten/Boucher, those types. I do think playing better teams has made the transition look worse than it is. If we had played the Utah and Colorado in the first week I think we still lose both games, if we played the Arizona schools I think we lose both. It took an insane shooting performance to beat WSU, the type of shooting performance you see only about one or two times a year. I still like the team more than past years, but we've shown that we aren't quite as good as I think we hoped we would be with Dante and Bittle. If Bittle is going to play then he has to start being able to shoot the basketball, right now it looks like he can't shoot, so he's a bit of a liability on offensive since he can't really be a threat. KJ Evans is a real key to the season, he's only player who can play the 4 with athleticism and length, you see what the player (Williams) at Colorado provided, we need a bit of that from Evans. It's unfortunate that we had the injuries we had, we haven't been able to find that chemistry with everyone available, but it's really difficult to sit a guy like Dante who is so talented.

I don't think it's that, we still played a lot with Diawara, we're playing much better teams, we don't really have a great 3/4 option, Arizona is a good team that have gone bonkers from deep, and we've gone stone cold from outside. Doesn't help that Shelsted is basically a non-entity now. I'm not putting him down, he's going to figure it out, but we went from getting 14-20 points to now around 5, and he isn't a good defensive player right now.

Just want to say thank you to the pit crew for getting Love in his groove, good job guys! Need to hit shots and can't turn the ball over, a very sloppy game on offense and defense for the Ducks, not looking like our game, going to have win the tournament to get in.

Definitely Mudslide! Defense got stiffer, got a couple easy baskets, get a bit of confidence, and it's amazing what confidence does for the shooting stroke. One thing that is interesting to see is how we are adjusting to not only the implementation of Dante/Bittle, but also how Shelsted is now being targeted on both offense/defense, he's having to adjust, and Altman is now leaning on Barthelemy who certainly has deserved the increase in minutes based on his play. Wish Arizona had boat raced OSU, I think we would be more set up for the upset if that had happened. I expect a high scoring game since the Cats play a pretty uptempo pace. I hope Dante doesn't get too gassed.

I'm not disheartened by the team, it's the conference that is so pathetic, some in here have talked about how the B1G is overrated in basketball, but at least they have teams that are ranked, P12 basketball has mostly been a collection of so-so to bad teams with the occasional contender, mostly though it's a league that continually is 2nd best in the west, the WCC and the Mountain West have been better leagues in the last few years, and that should NEVER happen. It's pretty incredibly how far the Bay Area schools have dropped as basketball programs, the Stanford that had great players like Casey Jacobson and the Lopez brothers are distant past, just as Cal used to have some pretty good teams, as much I hated the Romar teams UW used to have some good ones, WSU had a streak of some good teams, all of these programs have massively underachieved what they are capable of. I think one of the reasons why attendance is down here, is that none of these games feel that big, ASU even though they were tied for first with Oregon doesn't feel like a must go to game, it's against a middling team nationally that has had a good start to league. No one other than Arizona and I guess Utah turned up in preseason. Most years in the past 10 or so, we've seen the Pac-12 send around 3-4 teams to the dance, that's not a good number and it makes games feel insignificant. Combine this with prices that are bit too high, and you have the recipe for crowds that aren't great, I also think the presentation of the game is poor, kiss cam, dance cam, all this baloney can go, give me back cheerleaders and the band!

We'll probably need to win Saturday, then go on a pretty impressive run to get into the conversation of the tournament, not winning in the Rockies was pretty bad for the resume, not because those teams are bad it's just that we basically have one more road game on the schedule that could help the resume substantially in Arizona, where it is very difficult to win. Really could have used Arizona winning the other night.

It's impossible to say right now not knowing who the QB will be, not to mention any other additions that might come.

Pretty much this Despite what WSU and OSU say it's USC that killed the conference without them (and UCLA draggin behind), we would not have seen the ridiculous TV.....ummm internet streaming contract offer we ended up with that forced us into going to the B1G.