spartan2785

Might be, we have incredibly slow un-athletic bigs this year who cannot switch which is a bad idea when the whole point of Altman's defense is to switch on screens. Shelstad isn't a good defender neither is Key, they're small so they can't switch either. Tracey and Bamba aren't bad but they aren't ++ either. Evans just isn't very smart, and I think he's more of a 3 since he is skinny.

Never have I turned on a team like this one, so freakin soft, Bittle and Angel are such liabilities on defense, no ability to switch, yet we don't fight through screens, so we just end up with mismatches as Bittle and Angel who have NO athleticism on defense just get driven by. Soft mentality, nobody wants to step up, nobody rebounds, nobody has toughness, just an incredibly disappointing team who can NOT get off to a fast start to save their lives, just sleep walk through the first 10 minutes. No urgency, no communication. Our seniors play like freshman, no intelligence at all on defense or offense. Shelstad just does not understand that HE HAS TO START FAST!!!! Just sort of meanders about until the second half, then tries to turn it on. Wouldn't be surprised if we didn't win another game at this point, we look completely lost at this point without a shred of swagger.

I'll say it as well, Shelstad has to start realizing he needs to be involved in the scoring early and throughout the game, he can't just decide to be aggressive on some nights, this team needs him to take over when the offense is struggling. I would rather see him jack up 15 shots a game since he's the one that seems like he has the best chance to get hot. The worst thing he can do is go the Richardson route and only occasionally try to play aggressive. I get that he gets the opposing teams' best defender, I get that sometimes he gets a lot of attention from other defenders, but the team needs to lean on him right now! I also feel like our screens are super weak, I don't know if that's a strategy in order to roll more quickly or it has to do with movement, but when our guards go around screens they don't hug the hip of the screener, they just lazily go around. I'm obviously not a basketball savant, but my casual observation seems like we just don't go hard enough. We play too casual.

It doesn't help that Tracey and Moss aren't any better. When we put Key and Shelstad together on the perimeter we are just too small out there since we don't really have great help side rim protectors, Evans just isn't a 5 star talent it seems (our 5 stars never perform like 5 stars). It's beginning to become a disaster of a season that started out looking like a top 3 Altman season. We are soooooooo easy to play against. Our defense is blah, our shooting is atrocious. Just sag on everyone other than Shelstad and you're good, on defense just set a ton of screens and our guards aren't good enough to fight through, or you get a guy like Angel or Bittle on a guard and he just blows by because they aren't athletic enough.

It's inconceivable that Shelstad has two shots, he has to take control more often, he can't just step up when he feels like, Altman has done a horrible job this year with this team, they look unprepared, the team has no spark, the shooting is just disgusting. Need to get a shooting coach it seems like because we haven't shot well from deep as a team in a loooonnggggg time.

Regressed sooooooo hard, terrible half again, sleepwalking again, can't shoot for anything, meanwhile another team having their best night shooting of the year, seems to be a theme during conference play. .....I guess I just couldn't help myself, most frustrating basketball team in a long time.

Never mind, I'm getting ahead of myself, can't be automatically negative.

Cronin does have a right to complain, he's not the one that made the decision to move conferences, he probably was blindsided by it just as much as everyone else was. It's also not just the amount of travel, it's the way the schedule has no rhythm to it. In the Pac-12 you pretty much were Thursday-Saturday, occasionally Friday-Sunday. Now you could play on pretty much any day of the week. You don't have traditional road trips, it's a huge change to how you need to prepare, and I do think it's huge disadvantage to our teams since it seems that we have to do a lot more of this type of travel. Just look at the Oregon team right now, we had a game in Minnesota then have a road game to UCLA. So we have to go over to Minneapolis, probably then go home, then we are right back on the road down to UCLA, we come back for a game against NU, then right back on the road to the Michigan schools. I will say he's complaining more than he needs to, everybody gets that this is far from ideal, but you don't hear Altman, Sprinkle, and Mussellman doing this much complaining. I don't think he's helping himself, and I do think we'll probably see him leave since it looks like he's miserable right now.

I don't think Cronin was ignorant, I think he was focused on his team in the moment. Last year, he wasn't being asked these questions, he wasn't feeling the exhaustion that I'm sure he is now feeling. He probably also was told not to complain before the first year in conference. I'm sure all of these players and coaches are not exactly enjoying this level of travel. Football has it pretty easy, for the basketball, volleyball, softball, baseball, all these other sports where you play a 18 or so game schedule it's an absolute slog of a season.

The UCLA game will say lot I think. Bruins had a rough stretch after their game against us, but they seem to have righted the ship, they'll be playing at their place, when they played us they had their best shooting night in forever. If we can pull out a win, even better a relatively comfortable win (7-14 points), then I will feel a lot better. If we lose or even worse get stomped then I'll be very pessimistic about this being a typical Altman team getting better through the season (I will love to be wrong though about that!!!!). I do admit it's easy to forget that college basketball has ebbs and flows to it. Only the top 1-4 really don't have a blip in the season. Hopefully we've had ours, and we start to get some real momentum. If we can win this one, hold serve at home against Nebraska, that sets up a HUUUGGEEEE trip to the Michigans schools, great opportunity there!

Wow, pollsters must not have watched the game or they thought UM was Michigan. I really don't understand that at all. It's a terrible loss, and it was an ugly loss as well. I am not nearly as high on this team as I was in December, rebounding continues to be a problem, shooting is so inconsistent you have no idea what you are getting from most guys on the roster, at times there is a lack of toughness to set good screens or get around screens. We just don't seem to lock in until the second half, and you can't get away with that constantly. Only good things to come out of that last game are that Bamba and Angel have now had two games in a row where they showed up, unfortunately Bittle had his worst game of his career.

So disappointed in this team, it's going to cost them a seed in the tourney, came out unprepared, uninspired, completely unacceptable performance today. I don't know when they are going to realize they need to fight for every rebound, they need to hustle the entire game, leaders need to step up and take control, just horrible!

I say that, and then he hits a three, take that attitude throughout the game, have that every night!!!

This is a horrible loss if we can't pull it out, horrible performance by our stars, so little intensity, lack of precision. Where is Shelstad, go out and dominate, somebody take charge!!!!!

Annoying to come out like we’re sleepwalking, Minnesota isn’t a good team, have to come out with some intensity

The net also factors in things like offensive and defensive efficiency, so the fact that we basically don't blow anyone out hurts us.

There's been a few good ones, but none where you legitimately could see all 4 go in the first two rounds of the draft.

No, it's just the reality of college football now. You'll always see this with Oregon since you have the Nike link, and it's such a long distance for most recruits. I see just as many people claim this for those going to tOSU or Ole Miss or any other school. It's also probably true in a lot of cases, players want to get paid, it's a business to a lot of players (just look at the cases of Jaden Rashada, the UNLV QB, many others). It was a business in some ways even before players started getting paid due to promises of playing time, exposure to scouts, under the table dealings.

Autzen is special for those special games. It used to be special for basically every game (thinking early 2000s), but now it seems like it's more reserved for the truly big games. Most of the major B1G teams have now experienced Autzen (Michigan, Mich. St, Nebraska, tOSU, Wiscy). Only really need Penn St. to come out here to believe it. The rest of the league probably won't experience it at it's best since most of them are scrub teams (Rutgers, Northwestern, Indiana, Minnesota). They probably won't see Autzen at its best. Indiana could be a big game where they experience a raucous (for Autzen) environment.

Would love to have him, he's a really good player, at least at the level of Holden. Ekbuka and Smith got so many looks that Tate probably was under utilized for his talent level. Him and Stewart would be a good starting point. Kasper and Lowe will probably be decent. I don't really have a lot of hope in Dickey, I know it's only been his second year, just a feeling I have. When it comes to Dakorian Moore, I'm not really holding my breath, I know he seems like he's going to be a really really impressive freshman, but we haven't had very good luck with these 5 star receivers coming in and being a game-breaker from the start. Just basically not trying to get my hopes up.

Trust the coaches, they'll put the players in the best position to win. This group coming in is certainly the most heralded group of DBs to ever come to Oregon, it will be interesting to see if one of them will be that truly game changing DB in the mould of a Downs or Starks.

I think he's bitter towards Oregon now, the 12 man comment was so so lame, Chip we beat you, we should have won by more, yes you beat us later like you should since you have a lot more blue chippers than we do. He failed at every stop after he left Oregon, he's proven that he can't recruit without the allure of Nike and the Oregon brand. He got tired of failing at UCLA so he joined the Ohio St. where he doesn't have to put in work other than as a play-caller. He lost a lot respect from me for his comments towards Oregon.

He's not saying we were pumping in crowd noise, he's just saying it was so loud it felt like Oregon was pumping in crowd noise, give him some credit, that's what I took from it.

Actually.....I'm not sure if he's entirely wrong. I'm very interested to see what that team would have done with a much more dynamic threat at QB. I don't think it was a mistake from Sark, but I'm also not sure if they might have been better off going to Arch.

It's a weird team for sure, they aren't really improving like an Altman team usually does, though I guess his teams do tend to turn it on in February. I'm just amazed that we haven't been able to get a good shooting team in what seems like forever. Last few years it's been a struggle from outside. We used to be such a perimeter oriented team, now we are much more effective pounding it inside than letting it fly from outside. It's surprising to see guys like Bamba and Angel regress in their shooting percentages from previous years, usually you'll see players continue to become more consistent, instead you have no idea what you are getting from either of them. Tracey as well has become very inconsistent in his effectiveness. Really the only one that I think has been consistent in his value is Bittle.