PAC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 12, 2021

Dana Altman

Oregon Ducks

Postgame Press Conference

Oregon State - 75, Oregon - 64.

Q. Breaking it down for us, some of your takeaways from this one.

DANA ALTMAN: Oh, very disappointed. First of all, Oregon State just outplayed us. They outworked us right from the start, out-rebounded us, much more energy than what we had. I knew they would come after us. I tried to express that to our team, but we were just stuck in the mud from the start. We had a good stretch where we had played well, but tonight we didn't, and Oregon State did. Don't want to take anything away from them. They just outplayed us, they outworked us, they played harder than we did. Wayne had them really prepared. They did a great job and they just flat beat us.

Q. What do you learn from this one and what do the next few days look like as you try to bounce back heading into more post-season?

DANA ALTMAN: Well, there's got to be a sense of urgency. I thought we did that in winning the conference title. We had a sense of urgency that we had to prepare every game. I just didn't see that same sense of urgency. Now, it's one and done. You're done if you don't get prepared, so I'm sure hoping our guys will take that message, it could be over real quick. You know, if we don't play any better, any harder than what we did tonight, we'll be done Thursday or Friday. And I told the guys that. You got to, there's got to be a sense of urgency. We gave them some easy baskets early, they jumped on us, we weren't physical right from the start, and we were just straight up and down.

So poor performance. At this time of year, a lot of teams are getting beat in their conference tournament. I like the conference tournament, I wanted to compete. But we did not do a good job tonight.

Q. You talked about between rebounding and three-point defense in particular why you could point out the shooting on offense, do you feel like this was some of the defensive issues that you've been harping on the last couple weeks amid the win streak, just kind of came back to bite you here?

DANA ALTMAN: Yeah, no, defensively I'm not sure what you asked there, but they shot 50 percent from the field, 52 from three, we put them on the line 21 times. Yeah, those defensive numbers aren't good. And then you give them extra opportunities with extra shots. And, so, no, I thought our defense was not sharp at all, and that was right from the start. I mean, we were a step slow and just not sharp on defense right from the start.

Q. You guys have played a bunch of games recently. Was there any sense, any concern in your mind that you might be in danger of hitting any kind of a wall with your energy, either mentally or physically?

DANA ALTMAN: That would be an excuse and I just don't want to give 'em. There are a lot of teams fighting through the same things and as I'm watching the conference tournaments, there's so many No. 1 seeds going down, I just don't know how to take it. Teams getting down and having to battle back. So it's an unusual year, so I understand our players being fatigued, but we do have an experienced group and we just flat didn't get ready, Oregon State did. I knew last night when they came back and beat UCLA that they would be so energized and be playing with so much confidence and I told our team that. I told our team that we were going to have our hands full just because of the way they won that game. And we sure did. Again, Oregon State played very good, we didn't and we got beat.

Q. With all that, you shoot 40 percent, you win the game from three, basically. Is it lack of urgency affecting the shooting? Because you shoot like even close to what you did against them down at Corvallis, you win the game.

DANA ALTMAN: Well, we didn't have the same shots and our guys took too many off the dribble. Our ball movement wasn't as good. We got into the paint and had some bad turnovers. So I would have to watch the film again, but I just, I don't think our threes were the same types of threes that we got. We did have some wide open ones that we just flat missed. And part of that we were down and guys start pressing a little bit, wanting to come back, and the shots just aren't the same. So, yeah, we had some good looks that we didn't hit that would have really helped us. A couple transition threes there where our guys were wide open, we just didn't hit them and they hit their open threes. And that's a credit to them and on a big night like that, they go 10-19 and we had some good looks we didn't hit, but there were also some ones that I just didn't think were good shots.