After dropping its fifth straight Pacific-10 Conference game last weekend, the Oregon men’s basketball team had plenty to focus on during practice this week.
Oregon head coach Ernie Kent shied away from using the term “frustrated” when speaking with reporters before practice on Tuesday but said some things will have to change over the next few days.
“When you’re in a situation where you’ve lost five games, you need to do some things different,” Kent said. “You can’t just sit there and think, ‘Poof, everything’s going to be alright.’”
Kent went on to say the biggest thing for his squad right now is “believing in ourselves,” and when the time comes, the “ability to shoot the basketball a little bit better.”
There is no question the Ducks will have to shoot better if they hope to hang with UCLA tonight and USC on Saturday. Oregon’s last outing featured a 41.7 percent shooting effort from the field — the highest it’s been in four games — while the offense looked visibly out of sync.
Senior guard Tajuan Porter said the team needs to get back to making the basic plays that got them to this level in the first place in order to get back on the winning track.
“(We’re) thinking a lot, being robots,” he said. “You know, they try to listen to what the coach is saying but you got to make basketball plays. They may tell you one thing, but you’re out there playing and you’ve got to make adjustments.”
Porter led the Ducks with 16 points last game but said he hasn’t been feeling like his normal self as of late.
“Just been kind of passive offensively, that’s pretty much it.” Porter said. “I don’t know why it just happened. Just got to get back to being myself and stop second guessing myself.”
Sophomore Malcolm Armstead agreed with Porter, saying that instead of just making basketball plays the team is merely going through the motions while running drawn-up sets when they have the ball.
Regardless of the Ducks’ recent struggles, Kent’s message has remained unchanged.
“Compete. Compete hard,” Armstead said. “Stop being lazy and do whatever it takes for us to win.”
Another topic largely covered was the idea of freshmen “hitting the wall” in January. After several months of wear and tear on the body physically and the mental aspect of being away from home for the first time, first-year players often find themselves in a difficult place during the final stretch of the season.
“I think any first-year player, I don’t care if it’s first year of a (junior college) player, they both hit the wall,” Kent said.
Kent said every first-year player he has ever coached has hit the wall at some point in the year with the exception of two — Darius Wright and Robert Johnson.
Hitting a wall or not, Oregon must find some sort of consistency on offense. According to Armstead, the only way for the team’s scoring woes to improve is to get the big three offensive threats firing at the same time.
“When we have everybody performing,” Armstead said. “When we have Tajuan knocking down shots, we have Mike performing the paint, I’m attacking the rim creating for other people and we’re getting stops on defense. It’s all about when everybody is performing.”
With the Pac-10 struggling as a whole, one win at home could get the Ducks back on the right track. But that’s easier said than done.
“It would mean a lot,” Armstead said of picking up a win. “That’s all we need is a win to get us back rolling. We’re having great practices, but we just need to transfer it over to the games right now.”
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