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Autzen Audibles: Oregon Basketball Seasons Near the Finish — What Comes Next?

·43 min·2 clips

Kwame Evans hit a four-point play with 11 seconds left, then Washington coach Danny Sprinkle picked up two technicals.

Matt Prane and Mark Skopel start with March arriving and the tournament picture getting clearer. From there, the show moves straight into Oregon basketball. The first focus is the women’s team. They are treated as basically in the NCAA tournament field, with the bracket reveal still coming on Sunday. Their season is framed as a comeback story after a rough opening stretch and major injury trouble. The hosts note that the group pushed through that early mess and put itself in position to keep playing. They also wonder how long the run can last once the bracket begins. Then the mood shifts to the men. Oregon entered the year with high expectations and two preseason all-conference Big Ten players in Nate Biddle and Jackson Shelstad. The season wound up looking much worse than expected. The Ducks finished 12-19 overall and 5-15 in Big Ten play. That is presented as the most losses of the Dana Altman era and the most losses for Oregon men’s basketball since the 2007-08 season. The hosts talk through a year where a lot went sideways and not much went right, even while pointing out that the regular season ended on a positive note. The conversation then turns to what the program needs next. Some change feels likely. Staff turnover comes up as a real possibility, whether that means assistant coaches moving on, contracts not being renewed, or even a coach retiring. A total teardown is not the answer here. The bigger point is that the program cannot keep doing the same thing after two ugly seasons. The hosts also step back and talk about the larger shift in college basketball. They describe the sport as living in a different era now, with free agency and salary dynamics baked into roster building. Dana Altman is still seen as someone who knows how to coach, but the roster piece has become the difficult part. The discussion settles on soul-searching, new ideas, and finding the right mix in Eugene. The show closes by broadening back out to football, with the hosts saying football could start as early as this week, and to the rest of Oregon’s basketball calendar. The tone stays analytical more than emotional. What stands out most is that the Ducks are at a turning point, with the women heading toward the tournament and the men facing a harder reset.

As heard by us

A blunt Oregon basketball check-in that weighs March frustration against a clearer forward look for both teams.

This piece gives Oregon basketball a plainspoken late-season accounting, treating the men’s year as a miss against preseason hopes while giving the women’s NCAA tournament run the clearer lift as March nears.

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You want a straight read on where Oregon basketball stands as March tightens around it.

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