Following back-to-back losses on the road to both Washington and Washington State, Oregon head coach Dana Altman recapped the weekend, discussed what the team has been working on in practice and is looking forward to the team’s upcoming game against USC.
Were you disappointed in the way the team handled its first Pac-12 road trip?
We scored a lot of points. Offensively, we moved the ball pretty well, but defensively we were not good. There’s no other way I can put it. It wasn’t just the new guys, it was all of us. Again, I’ve got to take my share of the responsibility; it’s my job to get them in the right spot and get them to communicate. We didn’t perform well defensively in either game. I thought in the first half against Washington we did a nice job, but obviously in the second half we had a lot of breakdowns.
What have you been focusing on in practice?
Defensively, we’ve got to get better. We’re making a lot of mistakes. Not a lot of communication going on and guys out of position. That’s my fault. Fundamentally we’ve just got to get more sound, but then we’ve got to turn it up a notch too. That’s on them. We’ve all got to work together here and get a lot better defensively.
What are some things you have been doing to improve the communication?
We spent the whole practice yesterday defensively and just trying to get guys in the right position, talking. We did a lot of transition defense, USC has a very good transition team, so we worked a lot on that. It’s not rocket science, we’ve just got to get guys back and got to get them working together.
Does this weekend have a big impact on where your season could go?
Home games are always really important; conference home games do determine a lot of your fate. They have the previous three or four years, so I think they will this year also. It’s a big weekend for us, just because you’re at home.
Talk about USC’s point guards.
They’ve got two good ones. (Jordan) McLaughlin is a freshman, (Julian) Jacobs is a sophomore, they’re both good players. They’ve got a lot of quickness at the point, we’re going to have to control their transition. Both of those guys can get to the rim and cause teams to break down. Our guys are going to have to do a great job out front.
Talk about Joseph Young approaching the 1000 point milestone and his impact at Oregon.
In a two year span, that’s pretty good. There’s not a lot of guys that do that. He has been a wonderful scorer for us. Last year we had a lot more veterans around him. This year he’s got a younger team that he’s got to work with so it’s been a little harder on him. He’s an accomplished scorer, he scores in a lot of different ways. He’s had a solid year for us, but he’s had a couple of games where he’s put a little too much pressure on himself. He needs to lighten up a little bit and it’s awfully hard because he’s trying to make a great impression and he wants our team to win so bad. He just needs to relax at times and let the game come to him, but it’s quite an accomplishment to score so many points in 40 to 50 games.
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