The narrative surrounding Oregon men’s basketball, which recently stood amongst the nations top-10, quickly became negative after a five-game losing streak dropped the Ducks completely out of the rankings. 

Negative would be an understatement. The Ducks came into Tuesday night’s contest against the Northwestern Wildcats panicked. 

Oregon’s “live by the three, die by the three” mentality carried it through the early portion of the season, but killed the Ducks once conference play started. Against Northwestern, to the satisfaction of head coach Dana Altman, Oregon lived. 

The Ducks shot 41% from deep in the first half, which led them to a 39-25 lead, and finished the night at 38%. 

In each of the Ducks’ five losses heading into the game, the opponent scored over 77 points. Northwestern’s slow start was the only thing that prevented the Wildcats from eclipsing that mark, as Oregon’s defense surrendered 50 points on 61% shooting in the second half. 

“I want the guys to be excited about the win and excited about the first half,” Altman said. “But also, I want them to learn that we gotta get better in that second half. That’s two second halves in a row where we’ve given up 50 points.”

Even a career-high 26 points from Jackson Shelstad couldn’t put the Ducks ahead by any safe margin on Tuesday night.

Keeshawn Barthelemy added 19 and Nate Bittle tallied 14 of his own, but Oregon still never felt comfortable in this game. 

Why? 

The answer: two five-minute field goal droughts and — if not for a foul-heavy officiating crew — the Ducks would not have enough opportunity to stay ahead. That’s a quarter of the game where Oregon didn’t hit a shot, and many of those possessions ended on a missed, contested 3-point attempt. 

“We were getting really good inside out threes at the beginning of the game. I can’t remember a lot of [the misses], but I know we shot some at the end of the shot clock, forced threes or off-the-dribble ones,” Shelstad said. 

Even while routinely up by double-digits on Tuesday night, Oregon continued to drive-and-kick to find shots from outside. Shelstad curled around the arc and hit his first triple of the second half to put the Ducks up 13. 

Then Oregon’s offense went quiet, especially from deep. The Ducks started the contest 4-5 on threes, but finished the game 8-21. 

Shooting 24 free throws — and making 21 of them — in any half of basketball will garner success. Those metrics also proved a catalyst to the Ducks maintaining a lead in all but two minutes in the contest. 

Northwestern cut the lead to just five with five minutes to play, but Barthelemy came roaring back with Oregon’s first triple in almost eight minutes to potentially shoot a dagger in any hope the Wildcats had at staging a comeback. 

However, the subpar production allowed Northwestern to claw back into the contest, proving just how much fortunes can change over the course of a game. 

Oregon didn’t make a field goal for the final five minutes of the game, but the early scoring provided enough cushion against a short-handed Northwestern squad. After a positive step forward offensively in the first half, the Ducks regressed back to what they had been during the losing streak. 

“I want them to be confident and aggressive, but they also gotta be smart. That ball gets stuck and the defense can set,” Altman said. “Our ball movement is just not good enough, it’s gotta get better.”

Bad shots, tired defense and lack of ball movement can kill any team’s chances at winning, but the Ducks luckily did enough to pull out a win. It’s just unfortunate to think of January’s top-10 Ducks, who would scoff at a home matchup against a conference bottom-feeder without its top playmaker. 

Now, Oregon has to deal with two of the country’s rising stars in Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey, as the Ducks welcome the Rutgers Scarlet Knights on Sunday afternoon.