Big Ten Basketball: Ranking all 18 programs after adding Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington

11. Oregon

A long, long time ago, Oregon won the very first NCAA Tournament, but few people alive certainly remember that game. We’re more than eight decades into the future and Oregon hasn’t exactly been a pushover in recent years either. They’ve certainly been one of the Pac-12 very best programs across the last decade, though it hasn’t been all good for Dana Altman’s program either.

The Ducks were a Final Four team in 2017, but have appeared just twice in the Big Dance since then. They’ve won at least 20 games in all thirteen of Altman’s seasons as head coach, but have struggled with consistency and failed to live up to expectations in recent years. Oregon began the year as a ranked squad the last two seasons but failed to make the Big Dance, dawdling in a very mediocre Pac-12.

Let’s take a step back, because things are about to very different for Oregon in the Big Ten. This is a program that consistently wins and competes for Pac-12 titles, but their new league is a different animal. Sure, this program has a high pedigree and could compete with programs like Indiana and Michigan and the others on a nightly basis, but if they couldn’t even make the Big Dance in a weak Pac-12, who says they can be strong in the Big Ten?

We’re six years removed from that Final Four and Altman’s program is definitely losing some of their shine. A new challenge could be what they need to reinvigorate the program, but it could certainly have the opposite effect. Replacing teams like Colorado, Utah, and Washington State with Illinois, Michigan State, and Purdue is certainly a significant challenge. Recent history says Oregon should win plenty of games, but are these recent issues the result of the new age of college basketball or just bad luck?