SEATTLE — Dana Altman didn’t have to say anything that he’d never said before.

Oregon men’s basketball walked into the locker room at Climate Pledge Arena with a 44-20 lead (its largest in program NCAA Tournament history). Jackson Shelstad had just finished off the period with a two-for-one, five-point sequence where the guard dove on a rolling inbound, laid it in and laid down a shake-and-bake 3-pointer behind the arc to extend the Ducks’ halftime advantage to 24. The game was, for all intents and purposes, over.

“I talked about the importance of the first five minutes,” Altman said after the game. “(Of) not letting them get going and getting a bunch of easy shots. Nothing different…This was like a neutral game that we played in November.” 

Fifth-seeded Oregon (25-9, 12-8 Big Ten) rode a dominant first half to a confident 81-52 victory over 12th-seeded Liberty University (28-7, 13-5 Conference USA) in its opening matchup of the 2025 NCAA Tournament in Seattle. It dominated the scoreboard and the glass, where the Ducks snagged 43 rebounds to the Flames’ 27. Eleven Oregon players scored (nine had at least five points) in a game that was never a contest. Comprehensive is an understatement.

Just a little bit of history, though, is in order first. Shelstad, the only Oregon starter with career minutes in March, scored just seven points in his last Tournament game — a double-overtime loss to Creighton in the Round of 32 last season. He said afterward that he was thinking about that game — and that he knew that experience would be important this year.

He eclipsed that seven-point mark within the first five minutes of Oregon’s game on Friday night, dropping back-to-back 3-point makes from deep that stunned the Flames.  

“When you hit your first couple shots, obviously it just gives you some confidence and my teammates did a really good job just getting me open looks as well,” Shelstad (17 points, four rebounds, three assists, 3-4 3-pointers) said.  

Liberty ranks ninth in the country in percentage of points from 3-point shots per game (41.3%, per TeamRankings), and committed to that mark early; the Flames took four shots from deep before the 16-minute mark in the first half.

They missed them all.

Oregon didn’t make the same mistake. The Ducks opened with a barrage of points, scoring 13 before the first timeout, and made three from beyond the arc. By the 15-minute mark, they’d already made as many 3-point shots (four) as they had in their Big Ten Tournament loss to Michigan State seven days ago.

On Friday, the foot stayed on the gas. Altman’s team put together a 5:33, 15-2 run that controlled the middle of the first half. It didn’t matter what part of Oregon’s rotation was on the floor; the Ducks had four bench players — Supreme Cook, Kwame Evans, Jadrian Tracey and Ra’Heim Moss — on the floor and controlled the game just as well as the starters.

It didn’t matter when the Ducks went on a 2:38 scoreless run — not this time. Bittle (14 points, 10 rebounds) came right back off the bench with back-to-back layups, and Liberty couldn’t hang. Oregon dominated the glass, and its big man finished the period just one rebound off a first-half double-double.

“It’s a physical game,” Bittle said. “Altman tells us all the time that, growing up if your mom told you (basketball) is not a physical sport, it is. So we take that into consideration and it’s just one of those games where they didn’t have anybody that was bigger than 6’8’’ (or) 6’9’’, so I knew that crashing the glass and going to the rim aggressively was what I needed to do.”  

Finally, an Oregon team that has battled and bitten back from behind all season long didn’t have to do so in a game that mattered. Altman, the experienced helmsman in his glasses, was free to rotate through his deep bench throughout the second half. In a game just about today, his mind had the luxury of turning to tomorrow.

“When we had the game in hand there, I didn’t want to play anybody for too many minutes,” he said.  “We’ve got a game on Sunday and the transition that Arizona exhibited today — we’re going to have a lot of running…We’re a little fortunate there that we didn’t have to play guys for 35 minutes.”  

The moments were there, of course. 

Faced with a Liberty group just trying to milk the final seconds of first-half clock, Shelstad grabbed the loose-ball steal and two points before sending his man stumbling just in time to see the ball hit nylon from deep.

Evans threw down the back end of an alley-oop to put the Ducks up 25 with 12:45 to play. There would be no emphatic celebration — just a simple acknowledgement of the feed and a smile from Oregon’s two best players.

Shelstad and Bittle were sitting side by side on the bench with no need to return. 

The Ducks finally had no late comeback to summon or to stifle. They were simply efficient and incisive. The Flames didn’t do themselves any favors, and Oregon’s walk-ons held the ball at the buzzer of its second-straight Round of 64 victory.

Altman had more to say afterward than he did at the half — that 14 turnovers were too much and that he saw a frustrating lack of defensive activity that was perhaps the only thing that got him off the sideline and, shouting, onto the court on Friday night.

But really, there’s only one category on the box score that matters in March. The Ducks grabbed the final score handily.

Oregon will face fourth-seeded Arizona in the Round of 32 at Climate Pledge Arena on Sunday. Tip is set for 6:40 p.m. PST.