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Oregon basketball: 2019-2020 season review and 2020-2021 first-look preview

By Cody Williams

EUGENE, OREGON - MARCH 07: Holding a piece of the net that he cut off, Payton Pritchard #3 of the Oregon Ducks hugs a teammate after playing his final home game against the Stanford Cardinal at Matthew Knight Arena on March 07, 2020 in Eugene, Oregon. Oregon won 80-67. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images)
EUGENE, OREGON - MARCH 07: Holding a piece of the net that he cut off, Payton Pritchard #3 of the Oregon Ducks hugs a teammate after playing his final home game against the Stanford Cardinal at Matthew Knight Arena on March 07, 2020 in Eugene, Oregon. Oregon won 80-67. (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) /
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Oregon basketball
Payton Pritchard #3 and Shakur Juiston #10 of the Oregon Ducks (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) /

The Oregon Ducks lived up to preseason expectations and looked like a team capable of making a second consecutive trip to the Sweet Sixteen — or possibly beyond.

The 2018-219 version of the Oregon Ducks men’s basketball team was one that needed to find itself. It did just that at the best possible time, catching fire in March to win the Pac-12 tournament and advancing all the way to the round of 16 of the NCAA Tournament.

As encores go, this season’s squad was a good one. Dana Altman’s team started the season ranked 15th, rose all the way to fourth by the end of 2019, then stumbled a bit before finishing conference play with four straight victories. A third Civil War with Oregon State beckoned in the Pac-12 tournament before the coronavirus outbreak halted the college basketball season.

Interestingly, the Oregon men did all of it with a minimum of the national spotlight. Part of it was because the Pac-12 was not very good (again), with the Ducks the lone ranked team heading into tournament time. But an even bigger reason was the understandably large shadow cost by the Oregon women, led by history-making player of the year Sabrina Ionescu and two other potential top-five WNBA draft picks.

Still, the men offered a ton of entertainment value along the way, snatching wins from the jaws of double-digit deficits five times and emerging victorious in overtime games four times (some of them at the end of those comebacks). That suggests the Ducks could have been must-see viewing during March Madness, but alas.