[JaredL]

CardSharp,

I expect us to do well. I expect us to finish 2nd, 3rd or 4th. I haven't followed other teams much at all but UCLA clearly seems to be the top team and then I guess you have the ducks, Wazzu, Arizona and USC before the huge dropoff. I don't know much of anything about Arizona and little about USC so take that with a grain of salt.

For Oregon it's going to be a tough year to predict as the variance is pretty high. Brooks is gone and Malik Hairston needs to step up and be the superstar we thought we had on signing day. He has had his moments but hasn't been consistent enough to be the team leader. That was ok with Brooks having some monster games and hot shooting on 3s often bailing us out but I think this year without an experienced point guard he is going to have to carry the load. Like Brooks last year he is going to be the guy who everyone expects to get the ball at the end of close games. I think if Malik can dominate, as he showed for stretches of games last year but didn't do consistently, then we can go far especially if we get hot shooting like at the end last year.

On the other hand it can go the other way. I expect us to look awful at times and drop an easy game or two in the conference. Part of this is just that Oregon plays a high variance style with the up-tempo pace and the 3s. Last year we lost at Washington in one of the worst games I've ever seen. The two wins against Wazzu were ugly with the Cougs being better than Oregon at giving the games away. The other not so bad losses were losing both on the trip to Cal and Stanford and losing at home to USC. It's not awful but if you want to challenge for the conference title you can't take losses like those.

The other problem is of course the lack of an experienced point guard. Brooks played so much last year that nobody has played much at all there. I would not be surprised to see a couple games, especially early as Porter and Brown get experience there, slipping away because of turnovers and overall bad management.

I'm not sure how coherent that all was. Basically I think the regular season will go about like last year. Clearly Oregon is one of the best teams in the Pac 10 but I think consistency problems will keep us from challenging UCLA for the conference championship. Like last year if they get it together they could make a big run in the tournaments.