Maybe it’s the lull, the near two weeks that have past since the last Oregon football game. Maybe it’s the current NBA lockout, the greed and madness of which has been crushing my basketball-loving soul, slowly, over the past three months.
Maybe it’s just that I can’t stand to talk about football every minute of every day and, deep down, yearn for something to look forward to when December turns to January and then February. When the football season finally ends.
I don’t know what it is exactly, but lately I’ve been spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about, yes, Oregon basketball.
It feels strange even to type that. Sure, the Oregon men had a decent run last year and that CBI Championship victory was more than even the most optimistic fans could have dreamed of. MacArthur Court, in all of its rusted glory, gave way to the glitzy Matthew Knight Arena. An almost-invisible half court line left everyone scratching their heads at the beginning of the year and ultimately helped decide the final game. We had a little bit of everything.
But all of that, while fun, surprising and even joyful at times, felt like little more than a glorified warm up, a chance for Dana Altman to spread his wings and see exactly what he could do at this new school thousands of miles northwest of his former home. Working mostly with holdovers from the Ernie Kent era, it felt like a juncture between old and new.
It was also a run led mostly by seniors like Joevan Catron and Jay-R Strowbridge, which only added to the sense that Duck basketball was drifting between two different eras.
Things are different now.
This year, Altman will be coming in with a year of experience under his belt, his team well-versed in the frenetic system that he so loves. This year, he brings in a fresh group of his very own recruits, including a burgeoning star in Jabari Brown and solid prospects like Bruce Barron, Brett Kingma and Tony Woods. This year, there is a real chance that this team could be one of the most (gulp) exciting teams to watch in all of the Pac-12.
It’s all pretty remarkable, especially when you consider that a year and a half ago, the Ducks had just fired one of their most celebrated coaches and found themselves grasping at straws for a replacement. Brad Stevens, Mark Few, Jamie Dixon, they all turned away from Oregon’s lucrative offers.
When Altman finally accepted the job, you could practically hear a pin drop in the soon-to-be-shuttered confines of Mac Court. He had been successful at Creighton, sure, but this was hardly the type of hire that would get people excited to watch basketball again. Throughout the fall of 2010, I specifically remember thinking that my job would become significantly less interesting come winter. Things seemed pretty grim.
That I’m even thinking about basketball now, in the first week of October, should be enough to tell you how much things have changed. No matter how, or when, the football season ends, there will be something to distract us during the dreary winter months. The Ducks aren’t a sure thing; far from it, in fact. They’re more of a healthy “maybe.”
Maybe Jabari Brown will be as good as advertised and spark a wildfire of intrigue at Matthew Knight Arena.
Maybe E.J. Singler and Jeremy Jacob, along with other seasoned veterans, will come back better and healthier than ever.
Maybe this balanced and talented team will put the past few years in the rearview mirror and return to the NCAA Tournament.
Maybe a little bit of intrigue is all that this program needs to get back on its feet.