Hello, all. We’re a little over a month into the college basketball season, and I thought it would be a good time to have a little bit of a check in with how the Ducks have looked thus far. After starting the season on a quick four game winning streak, the Ducks have gone on to lose five straight contests, and are sitting at an underwhelming 4-5 on the season, and 0-2 in conference, losing both games to the LA schools. There have been highs, and there have been lows. Such is life, right? So, let’s get crackin’, and see how things have been going.
The Good
Recent injury struggles aside, Nate Bittle has been (unsurprisingly) a bright spot so far this year, averaging 14.4 points, 7.4 rebounds and 2.1 blocks per contest. His shooting numbers are down so far this year (just 40.8% from the floor), but I’m attributing most of that to a recent ankle injury and a truly horrible shooting performance in his first game back against UCLA (if you remove the UCLA game, his FG% jumps back up to 48.3%).
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Kwame Evans Jr. has also been playing the best basketball of his career so far this season, averaging career highs in points (12.6), rebounds (7.1), assists (2.3), and FG% (50%). He has scored in double figures in all but two games, including tying his career high of 23 points in his last outing against USC on December 2nd. He’s finally starting to play like the player he was advertised as when he committed to Oregon in 2023.
The Bad
The Oregon backcourt of Jackson Shelstad and Takai Simpkins has been… fine. Which would probably be good enough for most teams. But ooh boy, when this team needs a bucket and the opponent is doing everything in their power to take Bittle away as an option, they’ve really struggled to produce.
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Simpkins is, to put it mildly, very streaky. If he’s on, he’s really difficult to cover and can score in bunches, like against Auburn where he sank five threes on his way to a season high 22 points. But when he’s off, like he was against Rice (2-10) or Creighton (also 2-10), it’s hard to watch. He doesn’t get to the foul line consistently, averaging just 2.9 attempts per game, so if his jumper isn’t falling, he’s not going to produce much on offense.
Shelstad is just… frustrating. I know most of what I’m going to say can be attributed (at least somewhat) to a broken hand that caused him to miss most of camp, but the man needs to start driving the lane again. I am SICK of watching him settle for deep 3’s over and over again. He’s taking 14.4 shots per game, and NINE of those shots are threes. His FG% is down, his three-point% is down, and his FT attempts have stagnated. I understand that coming back from a hand injury, he’s not going to be as aggressive. But it’s been a month at this point, and I need the old Shelstad to please come back. Cap the three-point attempts at like six a game and Get. To. The. Rim. Please.
Conclusion
Honestly, the biggest issue I have with this team is that they have absolutely no identity. Through one month, they rank 286th in points per game (72.9) and 241st in opponents points per game (75.4). They’re a below average basketball team right now, with one of the worst benches in basketball (345th in bench scoring per game). They have one of the worst FG% in the league at 40.2% (340th) and have exactly the same number of assists as they have turnovers (118). This has been a very frustrating season to watch so far. And honestly, I’m starting to lose confidence that they can figure out how to turn things around. This team just doesn’t seem to gel together. On paper they should be above average at a lot of things, but they just… aren’t. Hopefully they can find a way to get things going, but they need to figure it out soon. Because January (and the remainder of their Big Ten schedule) is coming up real fast. Tick tock, boys. Time to get it together.
As always, ‘Sco Ducks.
