PAC-12 CONFERENCE MEN'S BASKETBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

March 10, 2022

Dana Altman

Quincy Guerrier

Rivaldo Soares

Oregon Ducks

Postgame Press Conference

Colorado - 80, Oregon - 69

THE MODERATOR: We'll have a quick opening statement from Coach here. We've got Rivaldo Soares and Quincy Guerrier with us, and open up to questions.

DANA ALTMAN: Well, we get beat on the boards bad, 13, and we were slow to loose balls, I thought we were just a step slow all day, trying to get balls, and they beat us in the categories that are really important, points off turnovers, second-chance points, fast break points. They got us in all areas.

So we didn't play as well as we needed to obviously. I know the guys are disappointed. We just seemed to be a step slow all day. And at times our ball movement was slow. Our defensive rotations were really slow. So didn't get it done, Colorado got us, and it's a disappointment.

Q. Dana, when you and the coaching staff first for the 28 minutes did so well at managing in the chess match and managing around fouls, what happened when you keep Dante in on the third foul at 12:25 and then 27 seconds later it's the fourth and how big a swing is that?

DANA ALTMAN: You know, it was big, because Dante was rebounding. He had 11 boards. Offensively, he wasn't as sharp as he's been, but he was rebounding. And that's when the big discrepancy in rebounds became obvious. We were only down two at half. And that's -- I don't know when Quincy got the charge called on him, but that's where it kind of popped open. And we had some bad possessions there, and they got some second opportunities.

Q. Dana, I was gonna ask about that sequence when Quincy had that charge, you had a three-point play on other end for Colorado, the importance those two plays of how the game got away?

DANA ALTMAN: It was a big swing. I'm not sure exactly what the score was there. But that was a big swing in the game. And we just didn't get the stops. We did a good job last night of giving up easy baskets -- not giving up easy baskets, and tonight our focus in the first half we were coming back in the zone, and Dante ran out to the wing, and they just shot an uncontested layup.

We had some focus mistakes, some scouting report mistakes, that you just got give yourself a chance to be successful. And we made too many mistakes.

Q. Dana, at various points you talked a lot about just how you guys as a coaching staff were adjusting to this team, whether it be after the BYU game or in the midst of Pac-12 play. I know it's still fresh on the back end of this, but what lessons do you think you and the rest of the staff have just taken away from this year going forward?

DANA ALTMAN: Well, you always want to take a step back, and these guys are frustrated with me and I'm frustrated, and so you don't want to make snap decisions just -- or evaluate things when the emotions are high.

We went into the season, our expectations were a lot higher. We didn't meet those expectations. And so as I mentioned that's on me, it's on the fellows, and we'll evaluate everything in our program to try to get better.

But we do that every year, whether we go to the Sweet 16 or whether we come off a year where we don't think we performed as well as we should. We evaluate it and try to get better.

Q. Dana, you noted that Dante had a good game rebounding the ball, but really in all three match-ups against Colorado this year they've done a good job of making things difficult for him. What is it about the match-up that maybe gets him a little limited?

DANA ALTMAN: Battey's physical in there. Walker -- Walker is as good as anybody in the league, in my opinion, with what he gets done. And he was obviously one of the best players on the floor today with 16 rebounds and 18 points.

So those two guys are athletic. Their activity, their length on the wing -- on the wings gives us problems. The two guys just -- Silva and Clifford, that size on the wings, their activity gives us some problems.

Q. Quincy, I realize this is in a losing effort, but this is the best performance you've had of the season, a season high in points and rebounds. Your perspective on the charge in particular, but also on your night as a whole, where I realize, again, this is in a losing effort, but this was your best performance of the season.

QUINCY GUERRIER: For the fouls, that's not something I can control. They called offense, and I think the biggest thing today, like Coach said, we got beat on the boards, and that was a big thing. We got beat by 13, and I think we made some mistakes defensively, we're not communicating, and I think that was the biggest point of the game.

Q. Dana, you talk about being frustrated. Is it more of a mental frustration transfer from practice, mistakes at the end of year that you saw in the beginning of the year? What are you talking about?

DANA ALTMAN: Oh, heck, these -- we've been frustrated -- it started in the summer, okay? Dante couldn't work out because of his ACL. Franck couldn't work from a lower leg injury. Quincy didn't work out because of his knees. Eric didn't work out because he was getting some things put together academically.

So our summer was messed up. And we move into fall and Quincy starts practice just off of rest, five months, six months of rest. Dante doesn't start practice. Franck is coming back from five months off. And so everything just started slow, and we just never caught up.

And I think the question about what does it show your staff, it shows you how important summer is, especially when you bring in new guys. Quincy -- we had talked about exactly how we wanted to change his game, get him more acclimated to the perimeter. Well, that's hard to do when you don't work out every day.

Franck's got tremendous energy, but we need to work on his skill level. He needs to play a lot more basketball, and that's hard to do when you can't work out for five, six months. And then Dante, Dante has been here two and a half years. Because of COVID one summer and ACL, we've never worked out with him.

And I know those are excuses. But when you talk about frustration, I felt like the guys are talented, and we just never -- we never had a good summer. The fall started off, the trust factor wasn't there, and these guys all had opinions on how the game should go, and a lot of times they didn't match mine.

And so there was just that give and take there, and it's my job to communicate with them, to connect with them. And it just didn't click the way I wanted it to. And I'm sure they feel the same way. Quincy has been dying to break out all year. All right? I think the people in from Montreal got him going. So we need to put the cardboard cutouts in the stands and have him go.

And Waldo is a junior college transfer and getting acclimated to a Division I program and the intensity in that, those are all adjustments. And we just didn't make them. We just didn't make them. Not like we should. We won 19 games and we should have won more.

I can't be any more blunt about that. We were talented enough, we're experienced enough, we had some nagging injuries in the summer and that, but no -- and nagging injuries through the year, but nothing that should have taken away from what we should have accomplished.

And for that I apologize to these guys because we got to be better. We got to be better as a staff. The players got to be better. We've tried to set a standard at Oregon that we try to meet, and I just felt like for the first time in a long time we didn't meet that standard.

Q. You were probably asked this yesterday, and this is for anyone, what impact did it create not having Richardson on the lineup?

DANA ALTMAN: Well, I think these guys will tell you Will, since Christmastime, has really tried to help us lead and tried to -- he was really hesitant to start the year on trying to -- he's been to two Sweet 16s. He's been on two Pac-12 Championship teams. He's won a tournament. You gotta let that experience show.

And he was hesitant to do that for whatever reason. But when he came back from Christmas, I was very pleased with his effort to lead and to try to get us going. And he was a big reason we had a little stretch there where we played well. And so -- no, we missed him. We missed his depth.

He's basketball savvy, as good as anybody we have on the team. His awareness, his basketball savvy is very good, and we miss that. Jacob is very good getting downhill, making plays in the transition. Not quite as good in the half court, where Will's much better in the half court, and some of our half court execution was not very good because that's usually Will running some sets for us.

Q. Dana, you mentioned obviously feeling like you guys came up short of that expectation and talked about throughout the season that there are no moral victories for this program. It's gonna be the first time in four years that on Selection Sunday you're waiting an NIT bid. How do you get this group focused again and motivated again for a situation where you guys know and feel you've fallen short and whatever is before you on Selection Sunday with an NIT?

DANA ALTMAN: Well, if they're competitors, James, they will want to put the O on. I would be really disappointed if they didn't. I mean, we had aspirations of going to the Rose Bowl and we're going to the Weed-Eater Bowl or -- it's not what we hoped for -- the Liberty Bowl, whatever.

Everybody wants to go to the NCAA tournament, and I understand that, and our guys -- you have an opportunity to put Oregon on your chest, if that doesn't mean anything to you, then there's a lot of guys out there that are disappointed.

There have been a lot of good players go to the NIT, and there will be a lot of good teams in the NIT, and there will a lot of name programs that have more tradition than the University of Oregon that will be in the NIT.

So I'd be very disappointed, if we get the invitation on Sunday, if our guys weren't excited about playing. And we've been in two NITs at Oregon -- when I was -- a hundred years ago at Kansas State, we went to the Final Four in the NIT and it was a great experience to go to New York and play in the Garden.

I want to play, and I hope our guys get the opportunity, and I hope they take it because we're not too good to play in the NIT. Our program, where we're at, we're not too good to play in the NIT. It's still an honor.

And it isn't the NCAA Tournament. I'm not gonna try to convince them of that. But it's an opportunity to play, and if you're a competitor, the opportunity to play should mean a great deal to you. And I would hope that an opportunity to play for the University of Oregon in any type of postseason would mean something to them.

MODERATOR: We're going to wrap there. Thank you, guys.