Ladies and gentlemen, the time is almost upon us. It’s tantalizingly close. You can feel it in the air.

Okay, maybe not everybody’s as fanatical about it as I am, but what the hell…BASKETBALL IS ALMOST BACK!

Okay, got that out of my system.

For the Men of Oregon, the 2025-26 season should be about one thing: Sweet Sixteen or Bust.

The past two years Dana Altman’s squad has made the almost routine late-season surge, once in the conference tournament and once in the regular season, to put themselves into the Big Dance.

Both times they cruised through the first round and both times they lost in the round of 32 when realistically they should have won.

So this coming season, with star players returning and star recruits incoming, there should be absolutely no reason we don’t see the Ducks on the floor during the tournament’s second weekend.

So, how do they get there?

Well, they certainly don’t have to wait very long for true tests.

After a stretch of very winnable games at home to begin November, Oregon is off, for the second straight year, to the Player’s Era Tournament in Las Vegas.

Vegas has been increasingly kind to Oregon during the Altman era, and hopefully it still will be as Bruce Pearl’s Auburn Tigers await right off the bat. Auburn was a 1 seed in last season’s tourney.

If Oregon can manage to win the PE for the second year running, they won’t get a huge rest before more challenges await.

The Ducks visit Pauley Pavillion to square off with the always-tough UCLA Bruins, who swept the season series last year.

Two weeks later, they match up with Gonzaga in Portland, only the second time in the last decade they’ve come across the Bulldogs, even though both teams are in the same area of the country.

Both teams are likely to be ranked in the Top 20, and this is all before Christmas.

The Ducks begin their official Big Ten slate by heading to the Northeast to face Maryland and Rutgers, the former of which may well be yet another Top 25 team.

After a couple more weeknight games against Ohio State and Nebraska, Oregon hosts Michigan at home, with the Wolverines coming off a big turnaround year, and then on Tuesday the 20th is the big one.

Tom Izzo brings his Michigan State Spartans, almost always a national contender, for a huge midseason matchup at MKA. Five days later Oregon heads up to Seattle then back home with the UCLA rematch on deck.

By this point we should have a pretty solid idea of how strong this team actually is, but we all know Altman tends to start working his magic in February, which begins with Iowa coming to town and then a trip to the always difficult environment of Purdue. Two days later The Ducks will be in Bloomington, Indiana, another hostile atmosphere.

The pressure lets up a bit with home contests against Penn State and Minnesota, and a quick trip to Los Angeles for the second game with the Trojans. Then Oregon will likely find itself against other Tournament-bound teams in two of the next three as they host Wisconsin then travel to Northwestern and Illinois.

They finish at home against Washington and by then we’ll be in March and, hopefully, all ready for the madness.

After the Big Ten Tournament it will be all up to Oregon to make it at least past the second round and into the Sweet Sixteen. Anything less, considering what kind of team they’ve compiled, would be an underachievement.

They may have a golden opportunity in that first round as Portland will be host to some West Regionals. If the Ducks can land in the Moda Center it will essentially be like two more home games for them.

But we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

In the meantime, there’s a long season to play.

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