He must have smashed a greaseboard. Or broken a locker. Maybe he tossed a chair, cussed a storm, peeled some paint. At the very least, Oregon coach Dana Altman must have gotten on his knees and begged. How else to explain the way his Ducks came out of the halftime locker room and finally defended as if their very lives depended on it?
It certainly was a different Oregon team than the one we’ve been watching the last two months. The Ducks started the season aflame, winning their first nine games, capturing the championship of the inaugural Players Era Festival in Las Vegas and rising to No. 9 in the AP poll. But since then, Oregon has ranked No. 76 nationally in adjusted defensive efficiency, per BartTorvik, and were unranked and 8-8 in the Big Ten heading into Saturday’s game at red-hot Wisconsin. The 11th-ranked Badgers are having their best offensive season in three decades and they showed as much by storming out to a 38-26 halftime lead.
The Badgers led by 15 with just under eight minutes to play, but Oregon’s defense had gotten noticeably stingier over the first 12 minutes and the Ducks found success attacking the paint. They closed the second half with a 19-4 run that was capped by a deep three-point dagger from sophomore point guard Jackson Shelstead with 12 seconds to play. They went on to win 77-73 in overtime.
Besides grinding Wisconsin’s machine-like offense to a halt, Oregon also outscored the Badgers in the paint 26-14 after halftime despite being outscored there 26-12 in the first half. Senior center Nate Bittle did most of the damage (23 points, 6 rebounds) while 6-foot-5 senior guard T.J. Bamba locked up Wisconsin’s All-American senior guard John Tonje, who had only 6 of his 22 points in the second half and OT.
So what exactly did Altman do at halftime to spur the dramatic change? When I spoke with Altman by phone on Sunday, he chuckled when I suggested my menu of possibilities. “I wish I could take credit for giving some inspirational speech,” he said. “It was more just, hey, this is where we’re at, fellas. If we don’t get these things corrected, we’re not going to get back in this game.”
It sucks when the facts get in the way of a good story, but perhaps the Oregon players just got tired of hearing Altman admonish them for their lack of effort—or at least finally came to the conclusion that he was right. “I’ve been talking and talking and pushing, but I’ve just been disappointed in our defensive activity,” Altman said. “We’re not real big, we’re not real athletic, so we’ve got to be really active. I’ve told them, we’ve got to have some urgency here. Some of you guys are seniors and it’s almost March. And in that second half, our activity was really good and we took away their rhythm. T.J. turned up the defense and the rest of the guys kind of followed.”
The other factor in Oregon’s comeback was the aggressiveness on the glass shown by 6-foot-9 sophomore forward Kwame Evans, Jr. The Baltimore native was a five-star recruit and McDonald’s All-American out of Montverde (Fla.) Academy, but he went from being a full-time starter as a freshman to averaging 15 minutes off the bench this season. Evans has yet to become a dependable three-point shooter, but in the last two weeks he has shown a renewed willingness to excel at other areas of the game. He grabbed a season-high 9 rebounds in the win over Wisconsin and added 10 points in 23 minutes. Given the context, it was arguably his best game in an Oregon uniform. “So many players worry so much about their offense, and that can be hit or miss,” Altman said. “He has learned that if you go after the ball, it gets you into the game.”
Bracketology: The SEC Closes In On History, 13 Tournament Bids
With one day until Selection Sunday, Boise State enters the field, while UNC and Texas will have to sweat it outOregon has already shown it has a high ceiling. The Ducks’ nine Quad 1 wins ties them with Tennessee and Alabama for the second-most in the country behind Auburn’s 14. But the Ducks have also demonstrated that they can lose games they shouldn’t (Minnesota on the road, Nebraska at home) if they don’t defend and compete with purpose. Which Oregon will we see moving forward? Even Altman doesn’t know for sure, but he’s hopeful that his team may have finally turned an important corner. “I hope something like this will flick a switch that we’re capable of doing this game in, game out,” he said. “Hopefully we can bottle this up and carry it forward.”
Arizona Coach Tommy Lloyd Shows Class After Bad Calls
I’m sympathetic to the challenges and scrutiny that referees face, but there is no denying that Arizona got a bad whistle on the decisive play of its home loss to BYU when Arizona guard Trey Townsend was called for a foul on Cougars guard Richie Saunders. (There was also a controversial call on the previous possession when Wildcats guard Caleb Drive drew a foul on a drive to the basket that was correctly called a non-shooting foul.) Here’s the play:
Saunders made both free throws to deliver the Cougars a 96-95 win. To say the least, it was a frustrating way to lose a game, but Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd handled the situation with pure class. When the buzzer sounded, he did not go after the refs or storm off the court in anger. He stayed to shake hands with BYU coach Kevin Young as well as the BYU players.
Then, when Lloyd was asked about the call afterwards, he neither minced words nor sought excuses. Here is what he said:
“It’s a bad call. I mean, whatever, what am I going to say? You hate for a game to be decided by that. It’s the Big 12 and the guy who called it is one of the best refs, so we’ve got to live with it. But step back, they scored (94) points up to that point on our home court. That’s the problem, that’s the problem. Me and my staff and our players, that’s the problem, not the officials. It would have been great to steal a victory if they don’t call that, but still, don’t put yourself in that position.”
Lloyd’s answer was both accurate and pitch-perfect. Coaches who blame refs for a loss, even when a call is this bad in a pivotal situation, are ignoring just how many plays actually decide a game before that point is even reached, including questionable calls that went Arizona’s way. (The Wildcats attempted 25 free throws to BYU’s 14.) Frankly, it shouldn’t be that hard for coaches to show class and perspective in these situations, but all too often they don’t.
Arizona didn’t win the game, but Lloyd showed what winning looks like. And no doubt that’s a big reason why his teams win so often.
OTHER HOOP THOUGHTS
• Meanwhile, it’s astounding to see Purdue lose four games in a row, including Sunday’s 73-58 drubbing at rival Indiana. The Hoosiers have been so bad this season, their coach had to announce an early retirement, yet after leading by 12 points at halftime, the Boilermakers could muster just 21 in the second half. Obviously, that’s bad offense, but Purdue’s big problem—literally—is a lack of size up front. Perhaps that’s to be expected when you lose a two-time National Player of the Year who stands 7-foot-4, but Matt Painter thought he had mitigated that somewhat when he brought in 7-foot-3 freshman Daniel Jacobsen. However, Jacobsen didn’t even make it to the middle of November before he was lost for the season to a lower leg injury. Purdue does have 7-foot-2 sophomore Will Berg on its roster as well, but he has obviously not earned Painter’s trust. Berg played just two minutes on Sunday even as the Hoosiers were outscoring the Boilermakers in the paint 44-18. I’ve been warning all season long that Purdue’s over-reliance on Braden Smith and Trey Kaufmann-Renn would catch up to it, but I did not foresee things sinking to this point. I trust Painter to make things better, but Zach Edey is not coming through that door and the Boilermakers do not look like a team that is primed for a run in March.
• No matter how many times it is said by people in the know, it is hard for fans to wrap their heads around the idea that there are no conferences when it comes to selecting and seeding the NCAA Tournament. So it’s going to be hilarious (and a little exasperating) to watch the predictable freakout when the SEC gets the vast majority of its teams into the bracket. Arkansas, Oklahoma and Vanderbilt picked up bubblicious wins over Missouri, Mississippi State and Ole Miss, respectively, on Saturday. All three of those opponents were ranked in the AP Top 25 last week. Texas had a major setback when it lost 84-69 at South Carolina (that was a major eye-test fail as well), but the Longhorns are still 4-8 in Quad 1 with at least two opportunities remaining and possibly more in the SEC Tournament. Consider the number of Quad 1 wins that other bubble teams have at the moment: Wake Forest (2), SMU (0), VCU (0), Xavier (1), Boise State (3), North Carolina (1), BYU (4), Kansas State (4). If I had to game this out, I’d say there’s a 100 percent chance the SEC gets at least 11 teams into the tournament, a 75 percent chance it gets 12, a 50 percent chance it gets 13 and a 10 percent chance it gets 14. Sound about right?
• Speaking of the SEC, here’s a scary (hoop) thought: Florida is about to get even better. The Gators have played the last four games without 6-foot-11 sophomore forward Alex Condon, the Aussie native who is a rebounding force, due to a sprained ankle. Coach Todd Golden indicated there was a chance Condon could return for Saturday’s game at LSU, which the Gators won 79-65, but he wasn’t quite ready. Condon should be good to go very soon. In the meantime, as our SEC insider Chris Dortch reported last week, the Gators’ frontcourt was bolstered two weeks ago when 7-foot-1 junior forward Micah Hadlogten decided to give up his medical redshirt and join the squad for the stretch run. So when Condon comes back, this team will be even bigger and deeper in the frontcourt than it was before. Told ya it was a scary thought.
• A couple of Duke-related thoughts for ya. First, although the Blue Devils romped over Illinois 110-67 on Saturday (Illinois’ strategy of launching a ton of threes continues to make little sense given that it is one of the worst three-point shooting teams in the country), Duke’s most versatile defender, 6-foot-9 junior forward Maliq Brown, is out the next few weeks due to a dislocated shoulder. So it was notable that 6-foot-11 freshman forward Patrick Ngongba played his most extended minutes of the season in the last two games. Ngongba doesn’t have the same switchability as Brown, but he did give Duke 5 points and 6 rebounds (four offensive) in 14 minutes in the win over Illinois. Ngongba missed his senior year of high school due to foot injuries, but he was ranked No. 24 in the Recruiting Services Consensus Index. It’s an amazing luxury for Duke coach Jon Scheyer to have a player of Ngongba’s caliber buried so deeply on his bench. Now he has a chance to improve and contribute while Brown recovers. And that could make Duke even deeper and more dangerous in the NCAA Tournament when Brown comes back.
• My other note about Duke is in reaction to the news that Associate Head Coach Jai Lucas will likely be the next coach at Miami. I’m surprised because Lucas has never been a head coach, but he is certainly capable of doing well despite the major challenges that come with that job. But my main takeaway is to remind people that Lucas was one of Scheyer’s first hires after he took over for Mike Krzyzewski, even though Lucas was not in the Duke “family.” He played for Oklahoma State and spent seven years as an assistant there and two more at Kentucky. Scheyer also went outside the family last summer when he added Emanuel Dildy to the staff. Scheyer does have two former Duke players, Chris Carrawell and William Avery, on his staff, but he deserves credit for not letting himself getting boxed in like so many others do when it comes to hiring staff. The most glaring example of this trap is at Indiana, which tapped Mike Woodson four years ago even though he was clearly not the best candidate. It’s a lesson that coaches and athletic directors should heed as they try to navigate the wacky new landscape in college athletics.
• Kansas is having a rough stretch, as everyone knows, primarily because the offense has really struggled (to put it kindly). The lack of production from transfers A.J. Storr and Rylan Griffen, combined with the presence of two non-shooting starters in Dajuan Harris and K.J. Adams, has translated to limited spacing around 7-foot-1 senior center Hunter Dickinson. But the Jayhawks could have a ray of hope in the recent play of David Coit. The diminutive, scrappy 5-foot-11 junior scored 20.8 points per game last season for Northern Illinois, so it’s not like he is unfamiliar with getting buckets. He had yet to earn Bill Self’s trust this season, but as the saying goes, necessity is the mother of invention and Self has been bumping up Coit’s minutes the last few games. Coit averaged 16.0 minutes over his last four games (11.0 in the eight games prior to that), made 11 of his 22 three-point attempts during that stretch and went for a season-high 15 points in Saturday’s blowout win over Oklahoma State. Let’s see if he can keep it up.
• I wrote last week about how Kentucky was floundering having to play without its starting backcourt of Lamont Butler and Jaxson Robinson, although UK still beat a pretty good Vanderbilt team by 21 at home on Wednesday and then put up a good fight at Alabama before losing 96-83 on Saturday. The problem isn’t just that Kentucky gets less talented without those guys in the lineup, but also that a lot younger. Butler (shoulder injury) and Robinson (wrist) are both fifth-year seniors. Their primary replacements, Trent Noah and Travis Perry, are freshmen. Butler and Robinson reportedly did some light workouts last week, but there’s not much sign they’re coming back anytime soon. Ditto for backup point guard Kerr Kriisa, who has been out since December with a broken foot.
• Looks like Michigan State found its elusive go-to scorer, and quite by accident. When the Spartans’ starting point guard Jeremy Fears was scratched for their Feb. 8 game at Oregon due to an illness, Tom Izzo gave 6-foot-3 freshman Jase Richardson his first start of the season. Richardson exploded for a career-high 29 points in the 86-74 win. Not only has Izzo kept Richardson in the starting lineup, he has kept calling his number in Izzo’s famously patterned sets. That strategy proved wise yet again Friday night when Richardson had 21 points, six rebounds and three steals in Michigan State’s 75-62 win at Michigan, which put the Spartans a half-game ahead of the Wolverines atop the Big Ten standings. Richardson doesn’t have the strength and athleticism that his father Jason had when he played at MSU. Rather, he gets his bucket with skill and guile, capped by a buttery lefty shooting stroke that seems to get better every game. This is the deepest team Izzo has had in some time, but for much of the season it lacked a true superstar. It has one now.
• Clemson lost leading scorer and rebounder P.J. Hall from its Elite Eight team, but the Tigers don’t look like they’ve fallen back at all. They own wins at home over Kentucky and Duke and have risen to No. 22 in the NET. One of the reasons they’re getting better is the steady improvement of 6-foot-2 senior guard Jaeden Zackery, who transferred from Boston College to help replace the loss of second-leading scorer Joe Girard. This was considered a downgrade offensively but worth the tradeoff because Zackery is a much better perimeter defender than Girard was. But now Zackery is getting buckets as well. During his first 15 games, Zackery averaged 9.4 points and shot 28.3 pecent from three-point range. Since then he is averaging 12.8 points on 44.2 percent three-point shooting and had a team-high 19 while going 5 of 8 from behind the arc in Saturday’s 79-69 win at SMU. The Clemson squad that reached the Elite Eight last season finished No. 23 on KenPom in adjusted offensive efficiency and No. 35 in defensive efficiency. This year’s Tigers are 16th and 26th, respectively, and while they still play the usual physical defense we’re accustomed to seeing under coach Brad Brownell, they also rank eighth nationally in three-point shooting at 38.8 percent. Does that sound like a team you want to play in March?
• I figured Baylor would have a hard time playing without Josh Ojianwuna, the 6-foot-10 junior forward who suffered a season-ending knee injury on Feb. 8. But I did not expect the Bears to fall this far this fast. Baylor, whose six-man rotation does not include anyone taller than 6-foot-7, is now 1-3 without Ojianwuna, including Saturday’s 76-74 road loss to a Colorado team that had won just one Big 12 game. Baylor is shooting 26.8 percent from three over its last three games and without the big fella in the middle, this team simply is not good enough defensively or on the glass to overcome that.
• Yale pulled off one of the stunners of the 2024 NCAA Tournament when the 13th-seeded Bulldogs knocked off Auburn 78-76 in the first round. Yale should have taken a major step back after its leading scorer Danny Wolf transferred to Michigan and its third-leading scorer Matt Knowling left for USC. Yet, the Bulldogs appear to be even better than they were a year ago. They proved as much over the weekend when they overcame a 15-point first-half deficit to beat Cornell 92-88 and followed it up by drubbing Columbia 90-64 to claim their sixth Ivy League title in the last 10 years.
The Bulldogs are the only undefeated team in conference play (11-0 Ivy, 18-6 overall) and own the nation’s longest win streak at 12 games. They are currently ranked No. 65 at KenPom. Last season they finished 90th. Without Wolf and Knowling, John Poulakidas, the 6-foot-6 senior guard who torched Auburn for 28 points in the tourney, is having to carry a heavier offensive load. He is averaging 19.5 points per game, up from 13.4 last season, but he is getting a lot of help from the much-improved Nick Townsend. The 6-foot-7 do-everything junior forward is putting up 15.5 points, 7.1 rebounds and 3.6 assists per game and is shooting 60.9 percent from three in conference games.
Like a lot of Ivy schools, Yale’s stringent admissions standards prevented coach Johnny Jones from bringing in any transfers, but Jones is now in his 26th season at Yale and owns more wins than any coach in the history of the Ivy League. Yale still has to win the Ivy tournament to get into March Madness, but if it plays its way back into the bracket, don’t be surprised to see the Bulldogs advance again.
• Finally, in case you missed it, last week was Student Manager Appreciation Week, an effort put forth by an organization called Grow the Game. The group was formed during Covid by Jake Cerota, a manager at Clemson, and Ashton Hopp, a manager at Kansas, as a way to get managers around the sport talking and collaborating. They started by hosting Zooms and inviting guests to join them and have since formed a 501(c)(3) organization that has raised around $40,000 in scholarship money. You can find out more about Grow the Game by going to their website and following them on Twitter. Managers work their tails off and usually go on to do great things in athletics and beyond. They’re worth following and supporting.
