OUT OF POSITIVE SPINS by ST

No one has been more supportive of the Oregon men's hoop program. I think way too many fans and media members have been overly harsh and clueless about what's been accomplished here the past decade plus. A program that couldn't find March Madness from the mid 1960's through the ball falling to ring in Y2K but once had been to the Dance 5 times including those two Elite 8's. That said, the back to back performances against Oregon State and last night versus Arizona State were disheartening. The term perfect storm isn't applicable. I'm changing it to perfectly "miserable" storm. Not only did the Ducks look completely inept, but Murhpy's Law showed up as the Sun Devils shot a whopping 8 of 13 from three point land in the first half to pretty much put this thing away. Oregon was a model of inefficiency. Don't want to drown you in numbers, but in that first 20 minutes the Ducks took 32 field goal attempts with ASU launching 28 shots. The Sun Devils accumulated 40 points to just 23 for the U of O. Yuck! When the dust settles it's possible Arizona State is the best team in the conference. They can shoot it and no one in the Pac 10 is even remotely as good as they are on defense. Coming in, they'd held their opponent to a season low in scoring in 8 of their 15 games. The 57 points Oregon squeazed out was the same as they scored in the Civil War misery, just 2 more than their season low in the defeat against Montana. I don't get what Tajuan Porter is hoping to accomplish driving the ball to the hole against guys a foot bigger than him. He's consistently getting it swatted and turning it over. He must learn to play to his strengths and that's bringing the ball up and hitting from outside. They say the sign of insanity is to continue to do the same thing over and over again, hoping for a different result. It's sort of early to call a game a must win, but a loss tomorrow against Arizona, especially a route, and the floodgates will be open. No question this team must be playing meaningful games in late February and into March to secure Ernie Kent's job heading into the new facility next season. I continue to ride his bandwagon as the most successful coach in program history and hope he's on the bench when Matthew Knight Arena opens up.
It looks like that might require a pretty substantial turnaround because the sparce crowd at the Pit last night did not seem ignited and on board with what's currently happening. Those are just cold, hard facts which I take zero joy in reporting.