After everything the Ducks have been through — from the tumultuous offseason to returning just three players with any real playing time — Oregon should be very pleased to be standing at 10-3 at the end of the preseason schedule.
The only person who doesn’t seemed pleased is Ducks head coach Dana Altman.
Altman, one of the best coaches in the Pac-12, has done a remarkable job of turning this new group of players into a possible NCAA tournament contender but even he still isn’t pleased because the Ducks, in his mind, are lacking one key ingredient from taking the big step forward: consistency.
“We’re looking for it but we aren’t getting it,” Altman said on the team’s inability to be consistent for a full 40 minutes.
In Oregon’s most recent victory, a 76-74 overtime win over UC Irvine, the Ducks featured a starting lineup of freshmen Casey Benson and Dillon Brooks, junior Dwayne Benjamin and seniors Elgin Cook and Joseph Young. While there’s nothing wrong with that particular group of players, it is however Altman’s sixth different starting lineup in just the 12 games played.
“There’s a lot of factors (when it comes to choosing a starting five),” Altman said. “We’ve had nobody separate themselves and until we do, we’ll keep changing them.”
The season opening lineup of Ahmaad Rorie, Brooks, Benjamin, Cook and Young has changed so much throughout the past month that Ducks have been unable to find any type of consistency with a starting unit.
Altman’s reasons for changing the starting lineup so many times has been effort and consistency, mainly due to the Ducks getting off to agonizingly slow starts and forcing this team, that runs maybe eight or nine payers deep, to play catch up.
However, the issue of consistency runs so much deeper than just trying to find a starting five that will get the Ducks off on the right foot.
Oregon has showed glaring signs of weakness when it comes to effort on both sides of the ball. While there is no questioning the Ducks’ talent, their effort in both practices and in games has been poor to say the least and according to Altman, he’s running out of ideas on how to jumpstart the team.
To this point, Altman has yet to see a difference in games and in practices as the Ducks aren’t making any real progress and the issues he’s having with the team are the same ones he had when the season first started.
“We’ve got plenty of depth on the team — our guys just need to concentrate on playing a heck of a lot harder,” Altman said after the Ducks defeated Concordia on December 3. “We’ve got to play a lot better — our execution on offense has got to be a lot better and defensively we’ve got to tie a lot of things up.”
Although effort falls on every single player on the team, Young and Cook have been no-shows when it comes to leading the young guys on how Oregon is supposed to play and supposed to practice. Compared to previous Oregon leaders like EJ Singler and Jonathan Loyd, this group of returners has been down-right rotten when it comes to leadership and effort.
“Until we have some guys, game in and game out, bring it, we are still going to be inconsistent — it’s that simple,” Altman said. “It’d be nice (if Young and Cook would step up) — they need to take care of themselves first but any leadership would be nice.”
With the Pac-12 play starting this weekend and hated rival Oregon State coming to Matthew Knight Arena, it’ll be interesting to see if a light goes off in the Oregon’s head because if it doesn’t, the Ducks will surely be watching March Madness from their living rooms.
Follow Ryan Kostecka on Twitter @Ryan_Kostecka