Sidenote about Oregon

When reading about Washington, and as a result Oregon because they just beat the Huskies, for my last post, I came across this sentence (or something very similar) quite often: "Washington lost at home to an Oregon team with four losses already - to Portland, Montana, St. Mary's, and Missouri by 37."

Anyone that quotes this has looked no further than the scores.

If you do happen to dig just a tad deeper, you'd realize that TaJuan Porter, the Ducks leading scorer, has missed four games (over a six game stretch), including one of their losses and all but six minutes of another one. You'd also realize that Michael Dunigan, the Ducks best interior player (who has scored 20 in three straight games since being healthy and averaged 21.0 ppg and 13.0 rpg in the sweep of the Washington schools), was out for two of those losses and has finally hit his stride. They've also had to deal with the loss of Joevan Catron, a starting forward, four games into the season with pain in his back.

Yes, Oregon has lost a number of games early in the season, but this is a different Oregon team.

They are healthy.

And while I'm not saying that they necessarily are a tournament team, I am saying they aren't necessarily the team that lost four games early in the season.