Jordan Burch on his confidence in Matayo Uiagalelei and the rest of his teammates during his absence "I knew there wouldn't be a fall-off"

Ducks beat UC Riverside, as expected, yesterday, 91-76.

Got a first look at some of the new transfers. People are going to love the addition of Brandon Angel. Very solid all-around player. He and Shelstad will probably be the leaders in minutes played. If you haven't seen him, kind of an EJ Singler type. Does everything, not super flashy, but just no real holes in his game. From Stanford, so you may have seen him.

TJ Bamba was another starter that will be very solid. Kind of a Jermaine Cousinard/Kario Oquendo type of guard. Very athletic and aggressive. Was a starter for Villanova.

Ra'Heim Moss came off the bench as another ball-handler. Looked pretty good. From Toledo.

Supreme Cook didn't play.

As for the returners... Bittle had a rough start, but came on as the game progressed, although he's in dire need of a haircut. Evans had a great game, 23 points, couple of 3s as well as some great around the basket buckets. Shelstad was solid, but really did more distributing, only 9 shots. Tracy and Barthelemy were about what we expect from them (although Barthelemy didn't shoot well, only 1 of 8). Mookie Cook got some limited minutes. Nice to see him healthy.

There's only one Freshman on the team, Jamari Phillips, and he didn't play.

Next up is Montana on Friday, Nov. 8.

Note: FYI there is a BIG 10+ subscription for streaming video of games not on the network. I signed up. It's $90 for the year. Not really needed for football, but for hoops, and other sports...

This weekend

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Today in the Wednesday War Room, we take a first look at the Maryland team and some keys for Oregon:

Final interview from today. Oregon head coach Dan Lanning stresses focus, readiness as Ducks prep for Maryland at Autzen.

Full story:

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Nikko Reed talked about preparing for Maryland this week and had high praise for their receivers. "I feel like they're NFL receivers."

We finish up our look back at the win over Michigan with our defensive report cart:

Here is our weekly report card for the offense against Michigan:

Jabbar Muhammad ahead of the Maryland game says that Oregon is the "Most connected secondary" he has been a part of.

Ducks are #1 in the initial CFP Rankings

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During Dan's presser he and James Crepea had a little exchange.

James asked about the last TD and Dan said he was sure DUCK fans were appreciative. He then commented "I know James was one of those guys that got excited. I got your back James".

James retorted " I never wager on sports".

Dan replied 'good to hear. I'd say that's a safe decision all the time'.

James had no other questions.

Terrance Ferguson talking about Kenyon Sadiq and Patrick Herbert during his absence: "They did a great job"

Today on Take Two, looking at the 'controversy' of Oregon's final score against Michigan, plus basketball is back!

At his weekly press confernece, Dan Lanning addressed the injuries to Tez and Marcus Harper, who might replace them, talked about his relationship with Mike Locksely and addressed the last touchdown on Saturday against Michigan.

Threw this together as a recap of the games tonight:

Took a look at the sting factor on this decommit plus thoughts on other OL that are either still out there or flip targets for Oregon.

Not sure I will really need to do this every week, but wanted to make sure everyone knows some things we are working on,

First, we are working on getting more subscribers. We have three new members this week as we run a promotion.

We are also working on getting our first sponsorship. I have it mostly set, but will have all the details within the next week or so. It is not a 'huge' sponsorship, but one that I think will add value to both you and the site.

You may have noticed that I am putting some things on the front page that are free' in fact, I am putting a lot of stuff there. There is a reason for this. In order to improve visibility of what we do here, we need more of our content to 'appear' in aggregating sites, and in applications that try to bring all team specific news possible. The dilemma is that most of those places use RSS feeds that do not show any content behind a paywall. So if we put more 'free content' on the front page, we will build better awareness.

I mean, some of the stuff should be free - like post practice interview videos. Unless we somehow get some exclusive interview, it is already freely available. I want people to come here for ALL of their Duck news and that means getting things that are free onto our front page where they can see the content. We will still work to put that stuff on the message boards so that people like my good friend DiehardDuck will see it, just want to also get it somewhere non-subscribers can see it - the more content they see, the more they might want to join our site.

Finally, a behind the scenes thing - we NEVER seemed to use SEO optimization tools. I am not sure how much it will help, but that is something else I am doing on every article as well. Hopefully after a while it will improve search results in our favor.

Ducks win 93-63 in a yawner vs Cal Baptist. I watched the game on B1G+ on my computer and it was a decent experience .. no ads

Fans get a C-, probably in remembrance of last year's team. Not many of them. Not much more than friends and family.

Interesting game vs an outmanned opponent. Always hard to tell what is going on in an opener.

Some early grades that may not mean much.

Three point and mid range games get a solid B. So does the defense, overall.
Ball security earns a solid A

Both offense and defense get C- under the basket as does the foul shooting.

Without being sure of my judgement, this team might be lucky to hold their own vs a decent team.

I didn't get a feeling the team is going to be exciting, though they had their moments, especially beyond the stripe with multiple ladies who can hit the shot. Defense looks pretty solid over all as long as they don't have to defend the basket deep. Cal Bap probably should have scored high 70's to mid 80's, maybe even more, except they were horrible three point shooters and didn't know it. Of course both teams might be expected to be a bit rusty out of the gate and the Ducks did put up 93 anyway.

I think it's fair to say that Oregon Football has established an accurate perception that they are all about explosion plays and lightning quick scoring drives.

It's true, we do love our 4-play touchdown drives that take 2 mins. This is why I found what we did vs. Mich so interesting.

Oregon's six scoring drives:
12 plays, 63 yards, 6:26 TD
6 plays, 75 yards, 2:01 TD
10 plays, 94 yards, 4:41 TD
7 plays, 80 yards, 1:12 TD
15 plays, 67 yards, 6:33 FG
And to close out the game...
11 plays, 90 yards, 6:59 TD

Four of the six are over 75 yards. Not one short field. Not one takeaway to set up a score. The two shortest drives in yardage were the two longest in # of plays and were 2nd and 3rd in TOP. The longest in # of plays only netted the FG.

The 1 minute 80 yard drive was, of course, the TD to end the 1st half.

This should scare the sh!t out every DC we face the rest of the year....because we're doing this while still not feeling like we've dialed it all in. We can still get better.

I hope Tez has a chance to come back and I will not underestimate his contributions.....but, that is the position with the most depth and we'll get to see now.