At this point, “March Madness” might not even be close to the picture. The remainder of Oregon men’s basketball’s season could end up just being about internal wins.

While 8-7 overall and 1-3 in the Big Ten won’t drop Oregon toward the bottom of the conference rankings, when looking deeper, it’s clear that things could get a lot worse for this team in the coming months. While the returning trio of Jackson Shelstad, Nate Bittle and Kwame Evans Jr. are still continuing to produce, the team around them just cannot stay up to standard and help enough to secure wins. The Ducks have just one win against a power four opponent, a Jan. 2 64-54 win over the Maryland Terrapins, who underwent major coaching and roster changes this offseason and haven’t won a Big Ten game yet.

It also isn’t the case that Oregon has just run into a buzzsaw of a schedule and needed to face off against some of the nation’s top teams. The Ducks have lost by double digits to San Diego State, Creighton and UCLA and showed even less fight at times in other losses.

As the season began, the Ducks prompted questions as to whether they could hang with the best, as they failed to dominate or even play their type of game in wins against teams such as Hawaii, Rice and San Diego State. It didn’t come as a shock that, when Oregon traveled down to Las Vegas for the Players Era Festival, it got blown out by the three teams it faced.

“We’re a poorly coached team, this is all on me,” head coach Dana Altman said after that trip. “Our parts are better than what we’re playing like right now. We’ll get better.”

Altman tried to exude confidence, but the worry on his face was apparent and became justified when Oregon dropped the following two games. Since then, the situation has definitely improved, as the Ducks have now won four of their last six games.

When one looks into it, however, the four wins came against three non-power four schools and a current Big Ten bottom-feeder in Maryland. Still, it’s something to be positive about.

“We’ve made a step,” Altman said after the Ducks’ win over Omaha. “We’re probably where we should have been at the end of November rather than end of December Jackson was out six weeks and hadn’t found his flow yet; I thought he’d get going by now.”

Altman recognizes that his team is both having success and still remains very far from what they are truly capable of. On the bright side, most of the roster is individually shooting some of the worst splits of their careers, so there’s room to grow and an assumption that growth will happen.

He also believes, per usual, that his team needs to move the ball more.

“Everything’s geared on ‘If I score, I played great and if I didn’t score, I played bad,’” Altman said. “For example, we need Sean (Stewart) to be the best defender out there and get 13 rebounds, which his athleticism allows him to do. But not if he’s worried about scoring. The points will come.”

The key for the Ducks going forward is to find ways to maximize the non-scoring talent of the roster, which can at times be hard when a team has this many shooters. At the same time, Altman’s ball movement idea has been the focal point for any Oregon improvement this season, so there’s a chance that never happens. In the meantime, Oregon’s ability to capture momentum by stringing together wins will come to define its road in 2026.