On Saturday in the Matthew Knight Arena press room, Deja Kelly talked about the importance of “stacking wins.” On Sunday, Dana Altman talked about the danger of “stacking losses.”
Two days removed from a 109-77 home loss to No. 22 Illinois, the Ducks men’s basketball team needed to bounce back. They got it, with a 83-79 shootout victory over Maryland. It didn’t really matter that it was a Quad 1 win. No one really cared about the effect on the Big Ten standings.
The Ducks simply needed to avoid a slump.
Despite the win, Altman’s postgame press conference was still heavily geared toward discussing the past and the importance of looking past it.
They’re hanging onto a top-10 ranking that has been all-but-slain by the Illinois loss. Yes, they’ve got just two losses on the season, but the season has felt much closer. As they round into a Midwest road trip that will demand far more than they’ve given at home this year, their form is imperative.
There were flashes of it on Sunday. Sophomore guard Jackson Shelstad made five 3-point shots for the first time this season after starting the year shooting 26.7% from deep. He went 5-5 from beyond the arc against the Terrapins to lead all scorers with 23 points. The Ducks don’t have a true star after losing N’Faly Dante and Jermaine Couisnard to the NBA in the offseason, but Shelstad is the closest they’ve got.
Altman talked about the defense, where he got in Shelstad’s ear after the blowout. He talked about what it takes to come back from a 13-point first-half deficit, which is the one place Oregon has thrived this year.
Finally, he says he told the team in the postgame locker room on Sunday, “We’re going to have to address this. We can’t let one loss lead to two, especially at home.”
“You’ve got to talk about things like that,” Altman said. “Our guys are experienced enough — they’re not a bunch of freshmen. They’ve got to figure some things out.”
He’s right. This is not last year’s team, divided between aging stars and wide-eyed rookies. There’s an expectation that these players — yes, even the second-year starter Shelstad — will shoulder a burden of leadership. Altman’s 35 years at the helm of an NCAA team are invaluable, but he’s not on the court.
“I tried to tell the team that we’ve been here before,” center Nate Bittle said. “We were there [in losing situations] against Alabama, against [Texas] A&M…we just know that we gradually get it back, a couple of points at a time.”
When the Ducks head east to Columbus, it’ll be that experience that they rely on in raucous Big Ten gyms. Shelstad talked up the Oregon crowd on Sunday. The voice will be against them in Ohio and Pennsylvania as they try to rebuild a streak that could power them into a second-consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance.
