Oregon men's basketball gets season back on track after historic weekend

A month ago, Dana Altman was searching for answers.

Following an ugly home win in which a middling Pepperdine team gave his Oregon squad everything it could handle, Altman didn’t pull any punches when asked to diagnose what wasn’t clicking for his group.

“Our team isn’t focused on making defensive plays,” Altman said. “They’re all offensive-oriented, which has really hurt us. … How hard do you want to compete? How bad do you want to win?”

Altman was calm and calculated with his response. He wasn’t lighting into his team; rather, it seemed as though he had run out of answers. How do extract consistently excellent defensive performances out of a group that is entirely disinterested in playing defense?

Since that time, Oregon’s players have taken it upon themselves to answer that question.

The Ducks delivered a thrilling 84-81 win over No. 3 UCLA at Pauley Pavilion Thursday and followed it up Saturday with a 79-69 victory at the Galen Center over No. 5 USC.

In doing so Oregon (11-6, 4-2 Pac-12) notched back-to-back wins over top-five teams for the first time in program history and became the first-ever Pac-12 team to sweep a conference road trip against two top-10 ranked teams.

In less than a month, the Ducks transformed from a listless, seemingly dead-in-the-water squad that looked in danger of missing out on the NCAA tournament, to one that is capable of storming Los Angeles and toppling two top-five teams.

“Our guys are just playing harder,” Altman said with a laugh following the USC win. “I wish I could act like we invented something here. We’re just playing so much harder than what we did.”

The defensive metrics still tell the tale of Oregon’s season. According to KenPom, the Ducks rank 106th in the nation in adjusted defensive efficiency — for context, UCLA ranks 20th and USC is 34th by that same metric.

But Oregon is still steadily improving, and it is finding ways to turn defense into offense. In the USC game, the Ducks generated 22 points off of 13 turnovers. Against UCLA, it created 17 points off 13 turnovers.

Altman admitted that part of the answer on the defensive end has been star big-man N’Faly Dante rounding into shape after returning from a major knee injury earlier this season.

In a team full of gifted scorers, Will Richardson is establishing himself as Oregon’s true go-to guy and dropped a career-high 28 points against the Trojans.

Altman has a reputation for rebuilding transfer-heavy teams on the fly and getting them peak at the perfect time. In Jacob Young, De’Vion Harmon, and Quincy Guerrier, the Ducks have three first-year starters who have spent the rest of their respective careers elsewhere.

Getting this group to click was always going to be a difficult project, even by Altman’s standards. Maybe it’s as simple as Oregon’s players finally buying into what their coach has been selling all season.

Whatever the answer might be, Oregon has evolved from a collection of talented individuals who seemed to have no chemistry or cohesion, to a group that is playing for each other with an established identity. And it has seemingly happened overnight.

“We’ve got guys in here that can score the ball,” Harmon said after the USC win. “But defense is where it starts; it’s our connection on defense. We’re staying together. Just trusting that, ‘You’re gonna have my back and I have yours.'”