And now the fun begins.
After opening the season with four home wins over four non-conference teams it was favored to beat, the Oregon football squad begins defense of its Pacific-10 Conference crown Saturday
at Arizona.
From an outsider’s perspective, it’s easy to start matching up the Ducks’ future opponents. UCLA awaits in two weeks for a rematch at the Rose Bowl. No. 20 USC comes to town Oct. 26 in what is always an entertaining battle. In November, the Ducks will face Washington State, Washington and Oregon State in consecutive weeks.
But Oregon’s calendar apparently doesn’t read any further than Saturday.
“We’re not looking past Arizona,” said head coach Mike Bellotti, whose team jumped up a spot Sunday to No. 7 in the ESPN/USA Today coaches’ poll, despite not playing last week.
“We’re the defending Pac-10 champions. We gotta go out there and get it,” he said.
Getting a third straight conference championship (the Ducks shared the title in 2000) won’t be easy. Seven Pac-10 teams were ranked in the top-25 at some point during the preseason. Even California, a team that finished with only one win last year, is among the top teams in the Pac-10.
“The Pac-10 is the best conference in the nation, there’s no doubt about that,” said Bellotti, who is 37-19 in the Pac-10 in
seven seasons.
Bellotti has said if a team goes undefeated in the Pac-10, it should be playing for the national championship.
“We’re going to run through the Pac-10 — you can quote me on that,” said junior safety Keith Lewis, who sat out with an injury in Oregon’s only loss last year, a 49-42 Stanford victory at Autzen Stadium.
The run must start this week in Tucson, where the Joey Harrington-led Ducks torched the Wildcats for 63 points last season.
This season, Arizona finished 3-1 in the preseason, narrowly defeating North Texas 14-9 at home Saturday. The Wildcats lost to Wisconsin 31-10 on Sept. 21.
As for Oregon, Bellotti said there’s still much room for improvement. He said he is looking for consistency from his offense, particularly in the passing game.
While tailback Onterrio Smith put up Heisman-level numbers in the preseason (467 yards, seven touchdowns), first-year starting quarterback Jason Fife has been shaky at times.
Fife’s numbers are impressive: 880 yards passing, and eight touchdowns to one interception in four games. But Bellotti said Oregon has become a “quick-strike team” with few sustained drives.
Bellotti said he expects Fife to become more consistent as he becomes more comfortable in
the pocket.
Defensively, the Ducks earned their first shutout in 10 years with a 41-0 romp over Portland State on Sept. 21. In all, the Ducks are allowing 14.5 points per game this season while giving up less than 92 yards per game on the ground.
“It’s a great feeling,” Oregon linebacker Kevin Mitchell said of the Portland State shutout. “It’s an even better feeling when you know there’s stuff you can get better with.”
Of course, stopping Portland State’s Division I-AA offense is much different from facing a Pac-10 offense. Even without a big preseason test, the Ducks say they are set for the conference games to begin.
“I think we’re ready,” linebacker David Moretti said of starting Pac-10 play. “If anybody is going to (sweep the Pac-10), we’re going to do it.”
Related Sites:
University of Oregon Football
– Official Site
USC Footbal
– Official Site
Joey Harrington memorial weekly sports poll
So, we here at the Emerald sports section care about you, our reader. You should know this by now. But if you had even a shred of doubt about that fact before, consider it gone. Way gone. Grand slam, outta-the-park gone. Because starting today, we’re reinstituting the weekly online sports poll, and life on campus will never be the same again. For you. Our reader. And in the spirit of such a monumental act, we’re posing a monumental question: Will former Oregon signal-caller Joey Harrington lead the NFL’s Detroit Lions into the playoffs this year? Of course the answer is no, even after Harrington led the Lions past the New Orleans Saints on Sunday, but this is Eugene. So maybe we’ll get a few yesses. The point of the poll is to get the pulse of the reader, so offer up your jugular vein. Go to www.dailyemerald.com, click on the “Sports” link at the top of the page and vote in the poll. Next week we’ll publish the results and the new questions. See you online.
Contact the senior sports reporter at [email protected].