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

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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Will Richardson #0 of the Oregon Ducks speaks with Payton Pritchard #3 (Photo by Steve Dykes/Getty Images) /

How did Oregon do this season?

If you were a neutral fan, it was hard to argue with the Oregon season as it provided a nonstop series of exciting games. The Ducks were the type of team for which no deficit seemed too great, yet they were equally capable of blowing their own leads and letting opponents hang around. Then there were those overtime games — six altogether, for a total of seven extra sessions. If “watchability” was a real thing, Oregon rated super high.

The guess is that Dana Altman would have preferred a little less excitement and a touch more dominance. Though the Ducks did what they were supposed to do and wound up as the class of the Pac-12, that wasn’t saying much given the state of the league.

Oregon had mixed success against ranked non-conference foes, beating Michigan (barely), Memphis and Seton Hall but losing to Gonzaga and North Carolina.

Including the two games against an Arizona team that was ranked 24th each time, Oregon’s clashes against ranked teams were decided by an average of just 3.25 points, suggesting that they weren’t able to separate themselves when the opposition got tough.

That suggests that maybe the Ducks weren’t built for a deep NCAA Tourney run, but Pritchard is exactly the type of guard who tends to shine once March Madness rolls around. From his clutch deep shooting to his ability to shake off slow starts, he came through again and again for Oregon and would have been a handful for lots of teams they may have faced going through the brackets.

If there was any bit of disappointment, it was that five-star freshmen N’Faly Dante and C.J. Walker didn’t end up as consistent contributors right out of the gate (and Dante missed nine games due to academic ineligibility, which didn’t help). The glass-half-full way of looking at that, though, is that the Ducks were deep and talented enough without needing them to be stars. That qualifies as a success in most people’s books.