Sports change fast.

That’s no surprise.

On March 23 — a Sunday night — I was at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle watching the last few seconds of Oregon’s NCAA Tournament Round of 32 game against Arizona in a pounding amount of noise.

One hour, two press conferences, a game story published and a Coca-Cola for my headache later, I was back out in the arena bowl. It was silent.

On my way out of the arena on Sunday night, I texted my good friend (and fellow Emerald writer) Joe Krasnowski.

Owen, 10:49 p.m.: “Why do we only get to write (sick) gamers about games that Oregon loses?”

Joe, 10:49: “Cuz there’s so many emotions that come with it. And then you save up all of ur best stuff.”

That’s what happens on stages like these, even if you don’t get to write about the winning team. Sometimes, I think writing about the team that lost is even more interesting, to be honest.

Sports journalism is amazing. I figured that out a while ago, but it hit me again in Seattle: Sports are where people go through crucial, formative moments in their life, and we get a great lens to understand it through. Some of the best stories happen on the court, but you’ve got to watch what happens well before and after, ask the right questions and try to understand them to tell the story well. 

That comes with time and experience — like I got this past weekend in Seattle.

So, here it is: To the best of my ability, here’s what I did, what I learned and what I think it meant, from a weekend spent covering Oregon men’s basketball at the NCAA Tournament.

I figure that I’ll kick this off with some stats, for sports’ sake:

Four days of coverage.

18 hours at Climate Pledge Arena.

Five press conferences.

Three stories published.

Two gamers.

2,941 words published.

107 tweets.

Eight social media standup videos.

Six chicken tenders.

Four Coca-Colas.

One Oregon win.

And one Oregon loss.

The two gamedays were pretty similar: I showed up to the arena a few hours before tip, watched (scouted, sort of) the game before — Arizona vs Akron on Friday and Colorado State vs Maryland on Sunday — and got some food. I was assigned to the Climate Pledge Arena press bridge, where I had a bird’s eye view of the court and a cool little tablet screen with a live stat feed.

I try not to pre-write too much, but I pulled a few stats before the game that I could throw in tweets later. I’d attended the opening press conference the day before, where I put together a “What they’re saying” piece that carried some of the quotes I thought would be interesting.

I recorded two videos for Daily Emerald socials before the tip: One, outside the arena, introduced our coverage while the other previewed the game. I sent them off to the socials team, and ate some pretty solid chicken tenders with peers of mine that also made the trip while we watched the rest of the Arizona-Akron game.

My game coverage happens pretty in-the-moment. When the ball is live, I’m writing live posts on X. That’s where most of the 107 posts came from. I’ve got a small spiral notebook where I write down little things that I want to remember or questions for later.

I try to write down the moments that stick during media timeouts. It’s a struggle sometimes to not put every single play into the gamer. but the flow is something like: Watch the play, Twitter, notebook, Google Doc. Somewhere in there, I weed out the less-relevant parts and get the best ones in.

At the half and postgame, I recorded short videos for socials that I fired off before heading to Oregon head coach Dana Altman’s press conference with the rest of the attending media. 

We got questions in and headed over to the media workroom, where I got in touch with my editors and filled in the gaps in my story before publishing the gamer pieces.

I try to get the game action written during the breaks in the actual game, and then add the color in later (so that the moments that make it in are the good ones that stuck with me). One of those moments was from one of the last timeouts during Oregon’s Round of 32 game on Sunday against Arizona.

Altman had his team all around him, but he wasn’t yelling like he had been earlier in the game. He was calm, and took the time to give each of his players (inaudible to me) instructions and then spent most of the rest of the timeout with his arm around Jackson Shelstad.

Shelstad ended up with the ball on the Ducks’ next and final scoring possession from the field. Altman’s actions went into the story alongside a quote from the sophomore guard where he talked about how much the loss hurt and how much each moment mattered. The action eventually made it into my Oregon-Arizona gamer:

“Finally, down two with 1.8 to tick and a second foul shot on the way — when Shelstad had to miss — he did. Oregon couldn’t grab the board. The buzzer sounded, and they headed down the tunnel as Arizona broke into jubilation.

“‘Losses like this hurt a lot,” Shelstad said. “It’s going to hurt for a while. We were right there last year and this year and just a couple different plays or free throws, anything, rebounds, could have went a different way. It’s going to sting for a little bit.’”

Some of Altman’s final words from the weekend hung in my mind until I wrote this piece, three days after he said it. They didn’t make it into the notebook, but it was from the last question asked in the press conference after the Arizona game. 

“In today’s era, you have to deal with the transfer portal opening tomorrow,” the question went. “How do you handle that conversation? Is that a distraction from the pain of this loss to look at the roster and work on it?”

His answer:

“I want our guys to be happy,” he said. “I hope they can be happy at the University of Oregon. You can’t be your best in any relationship unless you’re happy, you know, you want to be in that relationship. I hope and pray that the guys want to stay, because I, like I said, I want ’em to stay. 

“Everybody that can come back, I want ’em to come back. But they’ve got to be wanting — you know, like I said, every relationship is two-fold, I’ve been married for 41 years, I’m all in, I hope Reva (Altman’s wife) is all in, but that’s any relationship. 

“And with my players, I want ’em to be happy. And if they don’t think I’m the guy or Oregon’s the place, I understand that. Because I want ’em to want to be there so that they can be their best, academically, athletically, have fun playing ball, have fun in college. I don’t want the business aspect to take away from the fun of going to college, the fun of playing ball. 

“It’s different (now), there’s a business aspect to it, and I understand that. But, man, if you’re not having fun playing ball, if you’re not having fun with your teammates, if you don’t enjoy the four years you get to play, I’m not sure you can put a price on that.”

The players were undoubtedly having fun. So was I. 

Student journalism is unbelievably important. Everyone that supports it is — writers, editors, publishers, donors…everyone. I got the chance to go be a professional journalist for a weekend — and that’s not an opportunity that every person in my position across different careers gets. 

Did I succeed? Absolutely, and not even close to completely. I’ve got a ton of stuff that I realized I can do now that I can’t wait to get down on the page.

I can try to tell you what it was worth now, but I’m not sure what it’ll be worth down the road (even more, I hope). What I can say is that I had a great experience, got better as a journalist and soundly enjoyed myself.

And man, as long as you’re having fun playing ball, and as long as you enjoy the years you get to play…

I can’t put a price on that.