It might take a little longer than usual for this Dana Altman team to gel into form, but in the meantime, the Ducks will gladly take every win they can possibly get.
Oregon scheduled Eastern Washington to open the season and when that was postponed, the two teams had to wait a couple of weeks in order to meet up.
After a rocky first half of action, the Ducks were able to dispatch the Eagles 69-52 to go to 2-1 on the year.
In those two weeks, EWU managed to play Washington State and Arizona where the Eagles nearly knocked off both of them, losing by three points in each contest.
They were looking for an upset inside Matthew Knight Arena where the Eagles were the early aggressors, taking charges and igniting a lively bench. As a result, the Big Sky Conference favorites found themselves down just 36-32 at the halftime.
But as per usual, Altman used the full advantage of the break to make adjustments and in the second half, it was the Ducks taking it to the hoop more times than not.
Oregon outscored the Eagles 33-20 after halftime thanks to inside scoring from Eugene Omoruyi and hitting the boards. The senior transfer led the Ducks in scoring for the third straight game with 17 points.
Oregon also outrebounded the smaller Eagles team to the tune of 45-31.
“I thought we did some good things, but disappointed in our ball movement, a lot of missed defensive assignments,” Altman said. “We were plus-14 on the boards. I thought Eric (Williams, Jr.) and LJ (Figueroa) did a good job there.
“Our defensive communication has got to improve. At the five minute mark, we had a chance to put them away and we had four bad turnovers. We could have put ourselves in a bad position there. I hope we learned something from it.”
It was a very good thing that EWU couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean. The Eagles shot just 33.3 percent from the field and only 5-of-26 from long range. If those numbers had been just a little better, this would have been a close contest in the last two minutes.
Oregon will quickly find out if lessons were learned when the Ducks host Florida A&M on Wednesday for an 8 pm tip. The game was scheduled just a few days ago. The Rattlers have only played twice with two games being cancelled. They did scare Georgia in Athens before going down 85-75.
UP NEXT
OREGON VS FLORIDA A&M – Wednesday, Dec. 9th – 8:00 PM Tip
Matthew Knight Arena – Pac-12 Network
POST GAME; DANA ALTMAN DISCUSSES WIN OVER EWU