The University of Oregon Men’s basketball team was one of the last eight teams left standing in last year’s NCAA Basketball Tournament. Though they fell to the eventual tournament champion, the Florida Gators, in the Elite 8, they did show the college basketball world that heart can matter just as much as height and that the relentlessly quick team from Eugene with the fearless perimeter game should not be taken lightly.
However, after a 29-8 record, a Pac-10 conference tournament crown, and three wins in the Big Dance in 2006-2007, being overlooked by opponents is not likely anything they’ll have to worry about this season. What they do need to worry about is how to replace the one player who simply would not allow them to fail last year, Aaron Brooks.
Oregon’s fiery senior point guard defined the team’s season a year ago with two monumental game-winning shots. The first, a buzzer-beater at home against then top-ranked UCLA last January, sky rocketed the team’s confidence and national credibility. The second, a dagger on the road at Arizona a week later, silenced any remaining doubts.
However, Brooks, who led the Ducks in points (17.7 ppg), assists (4.4 apg), and cool, parlayed his magical season into an NBA roster spot with Houston Rockets. And, without doubt, it was Brooks who made Oregon go last season. He played over 36 minutes a game for the Ducks, shooting over 40% from 3-point range and over 80% from the line, and his assist-to-turnover ratio was nearly 2:1. Not only did he know how to protect the basketball, he knew how put it into the basket or set-up his teammates to do so with impressive efficiency, and he was on the floor for over 90% of each game to make sure that happened.
The good news for Oregon in 2007-2008 is that they will have three seniors in the starting lineup ready to help fill that leadership void – G/F Malik Hairston, G/F Bryce Taylor, and F Maarty Leunen. Of the three, Hairston is the most dynamic. While a heel injury dampened his 2006-2007 season and caused him to miss 10 games, he bounced back enough down the stretch to give a glimpse of his impressive overall game. At 6’6”, he has enough speed and lift to do a lot of different things on the floor. He averaged six boards a game to highlight his ability to play inside and hit over 42% of 3-point shots to showcase his perimeter game. In fact, his 52% overall shooting from the floor led the team and reinforced his ever-improving court sense and shot selection. Fully healthy, Hairston will be the one his teammates look to as a team leader on the stat sheet and in the locker room.
For a game, Bryce Taylor was perfect. Literally. In the Pac-10 conference tournament final against USC, Taylor hit all 11 of his shots from the field, including an astonishing 7-for-7 from 3-point range, and was perfect in his three attempts from the free throw line. His 32-point demolition of the Trojans gave Oregon a convincing 81-57 win en route the conference tournament title. While Taylor’s career-night didn’t necessarily translate to those kind of superstar numbers night-in, night-out (how could they?), his improvement from his sophomore to junior seasons was remarkable, nonetheless. The 6’5” swingman improved his scoring average by nearly five points a game (from 9.3 to 14.1 ppg), raised his overall shooting percentage by over 10% (from 40.6% to 51.7%), and improved his 3-point accuracy by nearly 16% (from 26.7% to 42.2%). As it is, Taylor has transformed into a dangerous scorer with a versatile arsenal. If he continues to improve, he could really be lethal in teaming with Hairston to give the Ducks a deadly 1-2 scoring punch.
Maarty Leunen was really given an impossible task last season. The 6’9”, 215-pound forward was asked to carry Oregon’s front court all by himself. While he was out-jumped and out-muscled in nearly every game he played, he was never outplayed. He simply outlasted taller, stronger opponents. Tireless and fearless, he would slowly wear them down – minute after minute, game after game. And when they weren’t looking, he would sneak out to the perimeter and knock down a three. Like Taylor, Leunen’s improvement as a player exploded from his sophomore to his junior season. In achieving career-highs in scoring average (10.8), rebounds per game (8.2), assists per game (2.1), and steals per game (1.4), he fully demonstrated his remarkable versatility. Perhaps, most surprising was his improvement as a long-range shooter. As a sophomore, he made a pedestrian 28% of his tries from beyond the arc. As a junior, he dropped over 41% of those shots on opponents, and most never even knew what hit them.
In fact, Oregon’s perimeter game was their trademark last season, and befitting a team from Oregon, they made it rain buckets. Dropping shots from the rafters like it was monsoon season in Singapore, everyone who touched the ball for the Ducks could hit a 3-pointer. All five starters made better than 40% of their treys, and they needed each one. With an undersized lineup that relied on speed to create open looks, they couldn’t allow a game to be decided on the glass. Missed shots meant rebounds, and the Ducks knew they how little chance they had to win that way. So, they ran and shot. And made.
And few people on the floor ran faster or shot quicker than the smallest player out there, 5’6” freshman Tajuan Porter. Porter needed that quickness because his window for an open look closed faster than anyone else’s. Although he started the year with little more expectation on him than to be a safety valve for Aaron Brooks to catch his breath for a few minutes a game, his deadly shooting touch earned him significant playing time. He averaged 14.6 points a game, shooting better than 41% from long distance and better than 90% from the line. When open, there was little question how good the little man with the big jumper was. His crowning moment was a 33-point barrage (on 8-of-12 shooting from 3-point range) against UNLV in Oregon’s Sweet 16 win over the Rebs in the NCAA Tournament.
This year, however, Porter will not only be expected to pick up where he left off shooting the rock but also to assume the team’s point guard duties. Can he make the transition from a shoot-only player to a pass-and-shoot player? He needs to, because the only other point guard on the roster is true freshman Kamyron Brown. While Brown has loads of potential with great court vision and a deft passing touch, asking him to run the team if Porter is slow to make the transition from off-guard to the point would be asking a bit much too soon. However, Brown certainly has the ability to play his way into more minutes at the point (shifting Porter and his deadly outside game to the 2) as the season progresses.
In addition to Brown, the Ducks’ bench looks to be much stronger this year.
The Invisible Man is finally visible. JC transfer Frantz Dorsainvil looked like a perfect fit for the Ducks last season. At 6’8”, 270 pounds, the athletic Dorsainvil would have given Maarty Leunen the front court help the team so desperately needed. Unfortunately, a funny thing happened on the way to Mac Court. The prized JC transfer, a native of Haiti who grew up in Montreal, got tangled up in Visa-related red tape and never made it to Eugene. Luckily, all of that crimson adhesive was somehow detangled in the off-season, and the Ducks finally have their highly coveted athletic big man on the roster.
Another transfer, 6’6” swingman Churchill Odia, may also see some significant playing time. Odia, who transferred from Xavier in 2005, played limited minutes last year, averaging just 1.8 points per game in just over nine minutes a contest. However, in his second season in head coach Ernie Kent’s system, he may find his way into the rotation more often, especially in light of the transfer of Chamberlain Oguchi. Oguchi, the very definition of a streak shooter, never found his touch last season. After establishing himself as a dangerous 3-point threat in 2005-2006, he hit just 26% of his long-range shots in 2006-2007 and then transferred to Illinois State in the off-season. So, Odia, recruited as a point guard by Xavier, may be the one who picks up Oguchi’s minutes this year or help in the point guard rotation, but he’ll have plenty of competition for those minutes.
Another swingman, 6’5” redshirt freshman LeKendric Longmire, is also in the running for guard minutes. His athleticism and defense may win him some time, and defense became a surprising strength for the undersized Ducks late in the season. The team’s ability to shut down some of the Pac-10’s top scorers in the conference tournament jump started their NCAA tourney run. So, Longmire’s defensive potential may help to continue that trend. Early season games will likely sort out the minutes, but Longmire will have a chance to claim some of them.
With so many wing players, Ernie Kent’s squad might as well be playing in Buffalo, because they have yet another “tweener”, highly-touted freshman Drew Viney, whose impressive perimeter game fits in perfectly with Oregon’s high-powered long-range offense. With so much riding on getting outside shots to fall, the Ducks always need marksmen, and Viney is definitely that. It will just be a matter of how quickly he finds his range that determines his role on the team.
Along with Dorsainvil, sophomore forward Joevan Catron will get quality minutes in the front court. Last season, as a freshman, Catron saw his playing time increase as he showed his ability to defend in the paint and fight for rebounds. Although just 6’6”, he played bigger than that and wasn’t bashful about the physical nature of the interior.
Besides sitting at the end of Ernie Kent’s bench last year, 6’10” Mitch Platt and 7’0” Ray Schafer seemed to offer little more than 10 fouls and traffic in the post. The nature of Oregon’s high-octane offense didn’t help them get any closer to the scorer’s table, either. However, Platt’s a somewhat intriguing player. The fifth-year senior has had some productive minutes for the team but missed all of the 2005-2006 season with injury. As a freshman, he did play enough to average five points and four boards a game.
Of course, head coach Ernie Kent’s philosophy in recent years has been all about speed, and, frankly, tall players just tend to slow things down. And the methodology to Kent’s basketball madness can be traced directly back to his own playing days. In the mid-70’s, Kent was a player at Oregon. His team at the time was nicknamed the “Kamikaze Kids” for their aggressive, all-out style and their knack for sacrificing their bodies (via taking charges) on the floor. They were a frenetic, relentless bunch led by their all-everything guard Ron Lee. Forwards Greg Ballard and Stu Jackson were Lee’s top lieutenants, and Kent joined the fray off the bench.
The experience must have resonated, because Kent’s teams play with that same kind of fury. Although this year’s team is lacking their Ron Lee, Houston-bound Aaron Brooks, they haven’t lost their speed or intensity. With three senior leaders returning and Tajuan Porter with a full year of experience on his resume, they have enough to overcome the loss of Brooks. It is the addition of Dorsainvil and the high-ceiling potential of Kamyron Brown and Drew Viney that may be the keys for an even deeper run into March Madness.
So, there’s no sneaking up on anyone for the Ducks this season. However, that’s ok, because they can always just run past them on their way to another 3-point shot. And it all starts this Saturday night at the Pit against Pepperdine. Mac Court will be rocking, and, I suspect, it will, like the team itself, continue to rock all the way into March.
The University of Oregon won the very first Men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament in 1939. They haven’t won another since. In fact, they haven’t even been that close to reclaiming the prize in the ensuing 67 years. And there’s no Bill Buckner or Scott Norwood or Steve Bartman to pin the drought on. The equation has been pretty simple. An endless stream of mediocre teams just does not measure up with the UCLA’s, Duke’s, Carolina's, Kentucky’s, Indiana’s, and Kansas’ of the world.
And you can’t blame the shoes. Or the place they lace those sneakers up. Oregon’s home floor, McArthur Court, is nicknamed “The Pit”, because the arena that houses it used to be configured so layers and layers of balconies extended out so far that the floor seemed like it was sunken somehow and that seemingly endless rows of fans hovered directly above all of the action. Though many of those balconies have been peeled back, The Pit remains a loud, intimidating place to play.
Unfortunately, the Ducks haven’t made much use of that terrific home court atmosphere in recent years. Specifically, they’ve been left out of the much coveted field of 64 (or 65, if you really want to consider the “play-in game”) for the NCAA Tournament the last three seasons. There’s been no March Madness in Eugene in 36 months, and the locals are starting to get cranky.
Although Head Coach Ernie Kent has an overall record 52 games above the break even mark in his ten seasons on Oregon’s bench (164-112), the dreaded "what have you done for me lately" backlash may end up taking its toll if the Ducks fail to get to the Big Dance again in 2006-2007.
There have sporadic appearances of star players in the program: Greg Ballard, Ron Lee, Terrell Brandon, and, most recently, Freddie Jones and the “Two Lukes”, Ridnour and Jackson. But none have been able to attract the national spotlight. The one current, high-profile recruit that many thought would change all of that was Malik Hairston.
Although likely unfair given the enormous expectations, Hairston has yet to deliver on that promise. As a sophomore last season, he averaged 15.0 points a game and shot 47.0% from the field and 37.9% from 3-point range. And that wasn’t good enough. Now, the junior guard from Detroit has the entire weight of Ernie Kent’s possible future in Eugene and the success or failure of his team riding on his shoulders. “Put up or shut up” has arrived at this young man’s doorstep, and how he answers that door will go a long way towards deciding the success or failure of the team this season. Frankly, he’s the only true difference maker for the Ducks, and the team will only go as far as Hairston takes them.
Hairston will rely most heavily on senior point guard Aaron Brooks and junior swingman Chamberlain “Champ” Oguchi to help him carry the load. Brooks is looking for redemption in 2006-2007 after the ugly way his season ended last year. He was suspended from the Pac-10 tournament last March for elbowing Washington guard Ryan Appleby in the face. It was such an embarrassing and ugly incident that it will cost Brooks another two games this season. To his credit, he didn’t waste much time apologizing for his actions. He wrote letters of apology to both Appleby and Washington Head Coach Lorenzo Romar in the locker room after he was ejected from the floor and had them hand-delivered to both immediately following the game. And the Ducks need a resurgent Brooks for 2006-2007. He averaged 10.8 points and 4.4 assists per game last season.
Oguchi is the team’s most dangerous long-range threat. However, he is also one of Oregon’s streakiest players. When the three’s are falling for him, he’s lethal. When they aren’t, he’s just another guy running up and down the floor. And that difference was never more apparent than in back-to-back games in last year’s Pac-10 conference tournament. Oguchi scored 26 and 22 points in upset wins over Washington State and Washington, connecting on 12-of-25, 3-point tries (an impressive 48%).
The front court is mostly a loss. Center Ray Schafer is 7’0” but offers little more than four points and six fouls per game. Forwards Mitch Platt and Maarty Leunen are low-ceiling, high energy guys who will never lack for effort but simply don’t have the skills to match their collective enthusiasm.
The unknown piece of the Oregon front court is JC transfer Franz Dorsainvil. At 6’8”, the Haitian native who grew up in Montreal is a high-ceiling guy with some much needed speed and hops at a premium position. Unfortunately, Dorsainvil is having trouble sorting out some Visa issues and may not be available to the team until December.
The bench will be a little light. Guard Bryce Taylor averaged 9.3 points a game last season coming off of the bench and will be expected to make a similar contribution this year. Swingman Jordan Kent, Ernie’s son, is also a receiver on the football team and won’t be available to play for his father’s team until the football season is over. However, he is such a gifted athlete (he’s also a top sprinter on the school’s renowned track team) that his adjustment back to basketball should be fairly quick. At 6’5”, he’s a surprisingly effective rebounder, who averaged 4.4 per game in limited minutes last season, and provides an important spark off the bench. Another swingman, Churchill Odia, a transfer from Xavier, will also get an opportunity for minutes.
Top freshman recruits include tiny (5’6”) but lightning quick point guard Tajuan Porter, likely redshirt off-guard LeKendric Longmire, and promising 6’6” small forward Joevan Catron. Of the three, Catron’s development is probably the most important, factoring in the Ducks’ wafer-thin front court situation.
To say that Oregon will be a perimeter team this season is a massive understatement. Their ability to consistently hit from long-range might well make the difference between going back to the Big Dance after a three-season hiatus and staying home yet again. And this team knows that their perimeter game is good enough to take them places. Last season, they finished 15-18 (7-11 in the Pac-10). However, an agonizing eight of those losses were by three points or less, which means almost half of the team’s losses last season came down to a single possession. And the core of that team (Hairston, Oguchi, Brooks, and Taylor) is back in 2006-2007.
They’ll soon find out how much closer they are to turning those close losses into narrow victories. Oregon’s first step towards March Madness starts tonight at The Pit against Lehigh.
Nooch is a lifelong sports fan who believes that Indianapolis ended up with a slightly better QB than San Diego in the 1998 NFL Draft, the Golden State Warriors may not make the NBA playoffs again in his lifetime (how was I supposed to know that Chris Mullin would make a coaching hire and a mid-season trade that would basically save the franchise?), and that Mike Ivie's pinch-hit, game winning grand slam for the Giants against the Dodgers in 1978 may have been the greatest moment in baseball history.
