Sorry for not having anything up this morning. Busy day. I want to talk a bit about the Miami-Ohio game. Yes, it was disappointing. But, the bottom line is that we won. And that's the bottom line in the NCAA tournament. When you don't have your best stuff, you have to grind out a victory, and that's what the Ducks did.
I can't do a great game recap. Much of this has to do with CBS' crappy coverage. As I'm sure many people in Oregon experienced, I missed a lot of the first half. This is because CBS decided to cut to the Creighton/Nevada game, which went to overtime. Fine to cut to that for a game winning shot attempt. But the whole overtime--including timeouts? Oh, and I tried to get the Oregon game online to make up for it, only to find out that I couldn't due to blackout restrictions for local markets? WTF? How can you black out the game to force us to watch it on TV if you aren't going to show us the game on TV? Screw you, CBS. I also missed about three minutes in the second half because the Portland CBS affiliate lost the feed.
But, of what I did see, there often wasn't a lot to like. Oregon came out very lethargic, going down 9-0 on four Miami layups. They just came out with no sense of urgency. Then, they responded with a 20-0 run. Needless to say, this was the best stretch of the game. They were getting out in the fast break and playing at their tempo.
I don't know what happened after that, but the Ducks let Miami control the tempo. I kept thinking that they should go to a press or something to try and push the tempo up, but they never really did anything. And Miami began to chip away at the lead. The other question I have is how Pollitz, a post who is not even 6'6", was able to dominate the post so much. Imagine the damage that Winthrop's Craig Bradshaw could do. Oh, yeah, and we shot like crap.
Alas, as I said, the bottom line is that we won, and NCAA tournament wins don't come to Eugene often. So lets just be happy about that. But Winthrop is a great team, and if we come out like we did against Miami, we are going down. So, hopefully, the Ducks feel a bit more of a sense of urgency. But they can't dwell, either. Just come out and play their game. And rediscover the great defense that they had in the Pac-10 tourney.
GO DUCKS!!!
--Dave