Oregon Ducks

After a workmanlike dispatching of the Sooners on Sunday night, Virginia moves on to the familiar Yum! Center in Louisville to face off against one of the most talented 12-seeds in recent memories, the Oregon Ducks. Oregon, young but filled with star power, slept-walked its way through a mediocre Pac-12 before seemingly flipping a switch in late February. Stacked with size and athleticism, do the Ducks have what it takes to pull off the Sweet 16 upset?

Game Details:

What ‘They’ Say

Depth Chart:

The ABC’s of Oregon:

A) Talent isn’t the problem, but youth may be. This was a team that made the Final Four just two seasons ago, losing by a single point to UNC before Carolina beat Gonzaga in the title game. Dana Altman parlayed that success into recruiting momentum, and Virginia will face off against that this week. Of the Ducks’ Top 7 players, 4 were high-rated recruits to matriculate since that run, which include Wooten (247’s #129 in 2017), King (#20 in 2018), Richardson (#46 in 2018), and Okoro (#56 in 2018). Two other star recruits from those classes contribute spot minutes (2017’s #86 Victor Bailey at G, 2018’s #74 Miles Norris at PF). Factor in guard Amin coming in just this season as a grad-transfer, and you have only two core rotation players with more than a season or two in Eugene, only one of whom played in their 2017 Final Four run (Pritchard). That much youth/inexperience explains why this team was so inconsistent for so long this year, and why they were at risk of missing the tournament entirely as February closed. But it also provides reason to worry that they’re much more dangerous than their record would indicate once they can get going.

One footnote which announcers will discuss is that this team was also originally supposed to have 5-star Bol Bol on the roster this year, son of Manute Bol, who was lost in December to foot surgery. He led the Ducks in scoring (21.0 points), rebounding (9.6) and blocks (2.7) prior to the injury. Bol and King headlined what was the #3 nationally ranked recruiting class for 2018, behind just Duke and Kentucky.

B) The starting lineup is insanely big. The 6’2″ Prritchard will get the start at the point. After that, this team is going to try and overwhelm with size at the opening tip. On the wing is 5-star freshman Louis King who stands 6’9″. At the 3 through 5 positions, they’ll run out a trio of big men. The closest thing to a “3” among them is senior Paul White; at 6’9″ and 230 lbs he has the size to bang, but as a 38% 3-point shooter he’ll spend a lot of time on the perimeter (about half his shots are from distance) to try and contribute to floor spacing. Underclassmen Wooten and Okoro are both on-the-blocks players, neither has made a 3 this year, and will make life hell at the rim for opposing scorers. Wooten’s block rate of 12.9% ranks 8th nationally, to include an obscene 7 blocks against the Anteaters on Sunday night.

When coach Altman goes to his bench, the lineup will get a little smaller, as his top two reserves are guards Amin (6’4″) and Richardson (6’5″). But generally that still means that, at a minimum, the Ducks will usually have at least 2 or 3 guys on the floor standing 6’9″ making them an imposing lineup for our guards to face. Luckily UVA is a team with 5 rotation players in its Top 8 who are similarly big, and depending how coach Bennett chooses to deploy his lineup (it’s an intriguing strategic question whether Tony goes with much 3-guard), UVA is uniquely suited to counter.

C) Defense has keyed their resergence. There’s a strong correlation between experience and team defense, as we at Virginia know. We talked above about Oregon’s high roster turnover and youth, so defense was going to need work. Well, maybe they needed about 3 months to start getting it. Since they started their win streak at the end of February, the Ducks have held 8 of 10 opponents to 54 points or fewer, and no one hit 70 in regulation. They held Arizona and Washington (twice!) under 50.

Tactically, the Ducks run a matchup zone, one that looks like a man defense as much as it looks like a zone, which uses their length to cut off paint access and force teams into contested 3’s. Opponents are so dissuaded from penetrating that they take an exceedingly high rate shots from behind the arc (45% on the year, 44% over the recent 10 game streak, which is in the highest 10% of the country of opponents’ 3PA rate). But at the same time, the Ducks close out and challenge shooters so well that their foes are making just 29% collectively, 6th best rate in the nation… over the recent win streak, that 3P% allowed drops to a scant 23%. Wisconsin and UC-Irvine hit a combined 11 of 50 this past weekend from deep.

Oh, and did I mention the force turnovers in bulk? Altman puts that long, aggressive defense to good use by selectively pressing full court, attacking passing lanes, and finishing in the top 20 nationally (2nd in the Pac-12) in live-ball steal rate. During their recent hot streak, the Ducks are grabbing nearly 9 live-ball steals a game, and opponents have a lousy 9:15 A:TO ratio per game in that period.

Take all that and add to it the Wooten-led block party at the rim (Okoro isn’t bad either), and you’ve got a defense that’s a threat at all 3 levels. Virginia’s offense will have a steep hill to climb to find a rhythm in this one.

Their Season To Date

Oregon is 25-12 on the year. They went 10-8 in the Pac-12 regular season, then won 4 games in 4 days to win the conference tournament, which included 2 wins over the Pac-12’s other NCAAT teams in Arizona State and Washington. In the Round of 64, they beat 5-seed Wisconsin 72-54, and in the Round of 32 they beat 13-seed UC-Irvine 73-54. They are currently on a 10-game winning streak.

Their only big win on the year, prior to their current run, was Syracuse (our only common opponent) by 15 in November. The Pac-12 was historically bad this year, only 4 teams made the NCAAT or NIT, so the Ducks got no marquee wins in January or February. They had bad losses to Texas Southern in November and to conference middleweights UCLA (twice), Oregon State (twice), and USC.

Keys to getting the win:

1) Spread the floor to attack the paint. The Ducks are going to deploy an intense ball-pressure defense with long athletes ready to help in the paint. If we run a base Sides offense with bigs in or near the lane, it’s going to be a difficult day for our offense. Our shooters will be contested, and our paint penetration will be met with helping shot blockers. Virginia is going to need to take a page out of its gameplan from the Duke games where it (a) spread the floor with more perimeter oriented players (sorry Jack) to draw bigs away from the paint, (b) used a continuity ball screen offense to start moving the defenders around the perimeter, and (c) advantageous attacked the paint once a breakdown occurred. Maybe it leads to a score in the paint (I could see the midrange game being a huge part of the gameplan here), or maybe it leads to a kickout to a shooter who’s been abandoned by a defender crashing to help in the lane. But this is going to be a game where those spread sets, those high sets, create opportunities all over the floor against an otherwise stout defensive system.

2) Ball security. Oregon’s intense ball pressure and opportunistic attacking of passing lanes could be a problem. Regular readers of this game preview series know I often come back to UVA’s occasional propensity to cough up live-ball steals as a key area of concern with our otherwise-impressive offense this season. Duke (ACC’s #2 in steal rate) had 12 steals in their win in JPJ. Syracuse (ACC’s #1 in steal rate) had 9 steals in building up a small halftime lead at the Carrier Dome. Virginia Tech (ACC’s #3 in TO rate) grabbed 9 steals at Cassell. And just last week the Hoos committed 15 turnovers against Gardner-Webb.

The Hoos obviously have it in them to overcome strong turnover-focused defenses. Against NC State in the ACCT Quarters, an opponent that ranked 2nd in the ACC in defensive TO% and 3rd in steal rate, Virginia committed only 7 TOs, only 3 of which were live-ball. But if the Hoos get careless with their ball handling or passing, taking too many chances, then Oregon is going to be able to tilt the balance of this game. Tony should spend this week drilling the team with video of its turnover-prone performances; if we make it to the Elite 8, it’s because we found a way around our usually-below-average live-ball turnover performance.

3) Get their shooters out of rhythm. Oregon shot just 34% from 3 during regular season Pac-12 play, 8th in the league, and it contributed heavily to their bottom-half offense, especially since they took over 40% of their shots from deep, the 3rd highest rate in the conference. But over the last 10 games, that team 3P% has jumped to 38%, which would put them in the top 10% nationally if they’d performed that well all year. And they’re still getting hotter. Over the last four games (all against NCAAT teams), they’ve shot a combined 36 of 80 (45%), and in their two games in San Jose hit on 50% (a combined 20 of 40).

This is thanks to a couple of guards finally heating up. Pritchard is a 33% shooter on the year, but has shot 8 of 21 (38%) over the last four games. Amin is 31% this season but went 6/12 (50%) in the recent stretch. Couple them with effective stretch forwards King (38%) and White (38%), and its no wonder their offense is gaining momentum. Virginia must find a way to impose its defensive will on the Ducks’ perimeter game. The Hoos have the nation’s 2nd best 3P% defense, and it needs to show in this Sweet 16 matchup.

Predictions:

2014: 7-seed UConn. 2015: 7-seed Michigan State. 2016: 10-seed Syracuse. 2017: 7-seed South Carolina. 2018: 11-seed Loyola-Chicago. These are the teams that have represented UVA’s NCAA Tournament region in the last 5 Final Fours. History would lend one to wonder if 12-seed Oregon is on track to make it 6 F4’s in a row that a Cinderella usurps our place. Don’t think it can’t happen.

The Hoos are going from a team in Oklahoma that was maybe a little light on top-end talent and athleticism but had experience and continuity in abundance, to an Oregon team that is the opposite, heavy on star power but lacking much experience or continuity coming into this year.

But let’s not forget, this is a UVA team that has routinely squared off against elite programs with various high-level combinations of talent, experience, and size. Virginia twice this year went against a 5-star-laden Duke team that started 6’8″ Cam Reddish at the 2, and in our first matchup against them (when Tre Jones sat and Jack White started), all five starters were big. Syracuse ran out talented lineups with no one shorter than 6’6″ and the 7’2″ Pascal Chukwu manning the middle. We took on a UNC team with multiple all-ACC players and future pros with the 6’9″ Cam Johnson often at the 3-spot. So while Oregon is its own unique beast with size and talent and riding at hot streak, it’s not as if UVA doesn’t face a handful of equivalent challenges every year in its ACC title defenses. The matchup zone that Oregon will deploy will be somewhat of a fresh challenge, it’s unlike anything the ACC saw this year, but coach Bennett did get a few years’ worth of scheming against Rick Pitino’s own brand of that system with some degree of success.

Ultimately I think my best comp for this opponent is going to be the 2014-15 version of those Louisville Cardinals, their first year in the ACC and a season prior to the start of a scandal-ridden end to Pitino’s tenure. Those Cards started the 6’1″ Terry Rozier at the point with a young Quentin Snider (6’2″) in reserve, Wayne Blackshear (6’5″) and Chris Jones (6’6″) on the wings, and a parade of imposing bigs creating size problems all over the floor in Montrezl Harrell, Chinanu Onuaku, Mangok Mathiang, Anton Gill, Shaq Aaron, Jaylen Johnson, Akoy Agau, and Anas Mahmoud. Pitino had 10 players who’d come in as Top-100 recruits, and ultimately they reached the Elite 8.

Those Hoos, who played 60 of 80 minutes against those Cards without a healthy Justin Anderson (he broke his finger halfway through the first matchup) split against the Cards in a tightly contested pair of games, but in the 20 minutes UVA was full strength, Tony Bennett’s squad picked it apart, leading to 2 further years of Tony successfully game planning against Pitino’s matchup zone (not even counting last season when interim coach Dave Padgett ran it in Pitino’s absence). Bottom line, expect Tony to arrive with a plan in place to attack it. That this game is happening in the Yum! Center to boot is some weird divine coincidence.

When I initially started looking at Oregon after their pair of 20 point wins to open the NCAA Tournament, I winced. But what else would we expect? This is the Sweet 16, and just like the similarly hot and talented Michigan State team we drew in 2014 and the fierce and fast Iowa State in 2016, of course a team that makes it this far is going to be healthy and talented and otherwise playing well. Every other matchup this weekend will be similarly imposing. So as the days tick down and I finalize this scouting report, the better I feel. Not going to say I feel great; the margins are too thin at this stage for any fan base to feel overly confident about any game. But I feel good in the sense that Tony Bennett has this team among the nation’s elite for a reason. He’s going to put his talented, experienced players on the court with a game plan that gives them every chance to succeed, the way he’s done every previous instance this team has stared down a worthwhile foe.

This game could go a lot of ways, especially if turnovers become a problem. But if I’m forced to make a pick, I’m picking the team that has made a habit of staring down, and more often than not winning against, the nation’s best teams. It may not be pretty, but the Hoos should be able to find a way to survive and advance.

Hoos Win 65-60