Sooner or later, Michigan could finally visit Eugene for the back half of a home-and-home men’s basketball series with Oregon that started three seasons ago, but it won’t be in 2022-23.
Oregon defeated Michigan, 71-70 in overtime, on December 14, 2019 in a sold-out Crisler Arena. The Ducks and Wolverines were scheduled to play in mid-November 2020 at Matthew Knight Arena before the pandemic pushed the game back to 2021-22, which came and went without the OU game.
Now another season passes without the home game under the marquee of Oregon, which intends to host the power of the Big Ten.
“There’s no redemption, they’re coming,” said Oregon coach Dana Altman, who wasn’t sure the game would go to 2023-24. “I don’t know; they’re having trouble answering the phone I guess. They owe us a game and we expect them to refund the game. I’m sure if the shoe was on the other foot they would would expect us to return it and we expect them to return it.
Oregon’s non-conference schedule includes eight home games and three Portland games as part of the Phil Knight Invitational. That makes the Dec. 4 trip to UCLA the only out-of-state trip before January for the Ducks.
“It didn’t happen that we had (a non-conference road game), an opportunity that we liked,” Altman said. “With Houston coming in and Michigan owed us a game, it wasn’t like we were going to have a game for next year that somebody owed us. It wasn’t something we said, “We’re not going on the road”, it was just the way it happened. Planning is not an exact science and being here on the west coast creates problems with some people not wanting to travel. It’s a good schedule; it will challenge us. Getting to UCLA early is going to be a tough road trip. I think Pac-12 will be pretty solid. I think our schedule will give us everything we want.
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