GEICO PLAYERS ERA MEN’S CHAMPIONSHIP

November 25, 2025

Dana Altman

MGM Grand Garden Arena

Oregon Ducks

Postgame Press Conference

San Diego State - 97, Oregon - 80

Q. Obviously they got drilled by 40 the night before, and they're a proud program. Did you expect that kind of fight out of them?

DANA ALTMAN: Oh, absolutely. No, no, I told our guys. They've got a lot of tradition, and Michigan played really well. You know, they knew that they could bounce back. So, yeah, I knew they would be ready to go. We had beaten them here a year ago, and they wanted to pay back, and they hit some shots, and we gave them easy baskets to get them going. Then it was that basket just got bigger and bigger for them.

Q. What was the situation with Nate? How much did that hurt you not having that --

DANA ALTMAN: He's a big part of what we do, but you know, again, we've got other guys that need to guard. We didn't guard when he was in there.

Defensively you're just not going to win games when a team shoots 67%, scores 97 points, and out-rebounds you by 8. That's not a formula in anybody's book to win a game.

Q. Reese-Waters goes for 22 points tonight, and him including some other people had some big threes before the end of the first half. How much of that kind of defensive coverage broke down, and what happened there in terms of the threes?

DANA ALTMAN: Well, it was really bad attention to our scouting report. We gave up -- Davis hit two threes there that we just gave him right in front of our bench. We were supposed to be running him off the line. He came into the game. You know, he's a good three-point shooter, and he was 3 for 18 from two.

Numbers just say run him off the line, and he hit two there, and Jackson fouled him in the corner. He had nine points on three threes there that we shouldn't have been giving.

We gave up a lot of easy looks. Made a mistake in the zone once and gave up a wide-open three. They made us pay. They hit shots, and then Waters got it going there and got one right before half where we just weren't active enough on him.

I don't want to take anything away from them. They played their tails off. They had more energy than we did a lot of that game from the easy baskets that we gave up, but very disappointed in our defensive effort.

Q. Speaking of Jackson's performance, he started off the scoring run for Oregon the first half with back-to-back threes. Most of his scoring ended up being in the first half. Do you feel it was more of an adjustment to how he was playing or more of just the shots not going in the second half?

DANA ALTMAN: Oh, I think he got some good looks. He just didn't knock them down like he did in the first half. Probably wore out a little bit. He played a lot of minutes last night and a lot again tonight.

Q. What is Nate's injury?

DANA ALTMAN: Ankle. Yeah, he came down on a foot there on that shot and twisted his ankle.

Q. You tried to put him back in, but...

DANA ALTMAN: It was bothering him, you could tell, so I decided not to play him.