For the Love of the West…

I am rooting for Oregon’s former PAC-12 brethren, the Arizona Wildcats to win it all in hoops this year. Since Arizona last won it in 1997, only two programs west of the Mississippi River, Baylor (2021) and Kansas (2008, 2022) have won March Madness.

That is awful.

Even Mr. FishDuck paused from his study for the upcoming season at FanDuel sportsbook while staying on top of NCAAF latest news to lament the scarcity of college basketball impact from the west. He felt as I do on this…

So, naturally, I took a look at football for comparison with the Mississippi in mind. The river runs through the state of Louisiana, where LSU won two Nattys in 2007 and 2019, but that is not west of the Mississippi, and culturally, Louisiana fits in with all those southern schools on the eastern side. We are looking for some distance from the river, and we finally got that with Texas in 2005. Then, of course, we went totally “out west” with USC in 2004.

Approximately 80% of the U.S. population is east of the Mississippi, so the teams out west are certainly not pulling their 20%.

Time to get our butts in gear out west.

Conference Pride No More

The B1G Conference put four teams in this year’s Elite Eight. Granted, with the mega-size of conferences, it is not the achievement it once was, but it is still quite the accomplishment. Yet, my response to “my” conference’s achievement was a mere shoulder shrug as I mumbled to myself, “I guess that’s cool.”

Contrast that with the PAC-12 putting three teams in the Elite Eight in 2021. I felt a sense of pride and joy and excitement as I shouted at the TV when it happened, “See! We can play basketball out west!”

That year, an unbelievable seven of the eight Elite Eight teams were located west of the Mississippi. A banner year for western basketball, and I enjoyed every moment of it. But, as we know, with the mega-conferences stretching from coast to coast, the once regional nature of college sports is long gone.

Sorry B1G Commissioner Tony Petitti, my loyalty belongs out west, not with some meandering, soulless mega-conference that has freaking Rutgers in it. (photo from B1G Network video)

And, for the record, only one of the four B1G teams in this year’s Elite Eight was located west of the Mississippi. Only one, but it could have been worse. And, oddly, that was the team that I was pulling for. (Go Hawkeyes!)

My grand point with all this talk out west is this: My once loyal conference alliance (to the former Pac-12) has been replaced by a western alliance.

With that, I will take the Wildcats any day over some eastern B1G team.

One More Run For Altman

With the loss of Nate Bittle to the NBA and Jackson Shelstad, along with other players, to the transfer portal, Dana Altman will be building Oregon basketball from scratch. I could be wrong, but I see this as Altman building the foundation for the final three-to-five-year stretch of his career. His final act.

It would be nice to see Altman make one more run at the Final Four; he deserves it. It will be interesting to see how Altman puts together the core of his “last” team. I suspect he may not take in any one and done players right away. Maybe he will in a couple of years if he sees them as the final piece to get the Ducks over the top.

I think his focus for now will be on high-character, competitive gym rats who are going to instinctively dive at loose balls without thinking of the possible monetary repercussions if they get hurt by doing so. The Ducks have seemingly lost those types of players in the NIL era.

Let us see if Altman can go “old school” in this new age of college athletics. That seems to be where he is at his best.

Darren Perkins
Spokane, WA
Top photo credit: Gary Breedlove

Natalie Liebhaber, the FishDuck.com Volunteer Editor for this article, works in financial technology in SLC, Utah

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Darren Perkins

Darren Perkins is a sales professional and 1997 Oregon graduate. After finishing school, he escaped the rain and moved to sunny Southern California where he studied screenwriting for two years at UCLA. Darren grew up in Eugene and in 1980, at the tender age of five, he attended his first Oregon football game. His lasting memory from that experience was an enthusiastic Don Essig announcing to the crowd: “Reggie Ogburn, completes a pass to… Reggie Ogburn.” Captivated by such a thrilling play, Darren’s been hooked on Oregon football ever since. Currently living in Spokane, Darren enjoys flaunting his yellow and green superiority complex over friends and family in Cougar country.