When you're a top-five team with national title aspirations and NBA talent, and you score .82 points per possession and lose by 17 to an unranked opponent in your second game of the season, well, silver linings are hard to come by.

Yet Oregon had one baked in before it took the court at Baylor on Tuesday, the same one it has had for much of the offseason: Its star player, junior preseason All-American guard Dillon Brooks -- a broad 6-foot-7 wing who led the team in usage, shot rate and assist rate last season -- would not be on the floor. Ergo, whatever happened in Waco, Texas, it would stay in Waco, Texas. Why freak out? The difference between Brooks-less and Brooks-led is the difference between spaghetti and noodles with ketchup. Besides, at some point in the near future, and possibly as early as next week, Brooks would end his recovery from offseason knee surgery. He would return to the lineup. Oregon would be fine.

Let's just say Oregon coach Dana Altman -- who, according to The Oregonian, "had a hoarse voice on Wednesday and began his media session by saying he's had better days" -- did not find this premise to his liking.

"I'm not going to let the guys off that easily," he said. "Dillon is a guy that will help. He meant a great deal to our team last year and is a great player with a great passion for the game and that can rub off on his teammates. But that's really easy to let the guys off the hook that way. This team is a lot better, even without him, than what it showed yesterday, and that's what disappoints me."

Two days later, Altman's theory prevailed, as did his team, in a 76-54 thrashing of Valparaiso. It's not just motivational coach speak: Oregon really can be fine -- which is to say, really good -- even with its best player on the bench.

Or, rather, its most important player -- a distinction that may prove progressively more crucial throughout the 2016-17 season. It is difficult to imagine a situation in which Brooks is not only the team's fiery emotional leader but also its most central, most relied-upon piece.

Brooks' usage and shot shares a season ago weren't crazy; he didn't gobble possessions like, say, Cal's Jaylen Brown. What Brooks did do, though, was, well, everything. Synergy scouting data breaks down plays into types: "spot up," "isolation," "cut," stuff like that. For the 2015-16 Ducks, Brooks had at least a top-three share of every type of play Synergy tracks. Post-ups, isos, hand-offs, offensive rebounds, setting the screen in the pick and roll, receiving the screen in the pick and roll, "miscellaneous" -- Brooks had a hand in every single slice of Altman's offense. This is not surprising, given Brooks' matchup-problem mix of size and skill, but still. Oh, and he guards, too. He's super important.

And yet. If you saw what Chris Boucher did to Valparaiso Thursday night, you saw what sure looked like Oregon's best player -- in the making, if not at the moment.

Boucher's line is impressive enough on its own: 25 points, 9-of-12 shooting, 9 rebounds, 3 blocks, 1 steal. It barely touches on how good he really looked, though. Take that steal. You see it in the box score. Do you even notice it? Does it even register? One steal. Whatever.

Oregon junior Jordan Bell is being asked to pick up the slack while Dillon Brooks remains injured. Scott Olmos/USA TODAY Sports

Now look at it.

That is a 6-foot-10 dude who began playing organized basketball at age 19, a guy whose path to Eugene is as unusual and unremarkable as any player in recent college basketball memory. That is a player who a year ago, in his first Division I season, sometimes looked lost ... and still, per SI's Luke Winn, "became just the third major-conference player of this decade to average at least 17 points, 10 rebounds and four blocks per 40 minutes, with an offensive efficiency rating of at least 120 -- the others being Kentucky's former No. 1 draft picks Karl-Anthony Towns and Anthony Davis."

That video shows a center who might be the best shot-blocker in the country jumping a passing lane 30 feet from the rim, probably getting away with a travel (who cares!), going from midcourt to the rim in three dribbles, stepping and ripping through two defenders at full speed, and finishing with a dunk. That's ... nuts.

Boucher was already good a season ago, and he was efficient, if not assertive, in Oregon's first two games. But it is moments like that which strike up that old Joel Embiid feeling -- the rush of watching a born savant learn the game at a frightening science-fiction pace.

Boucher isn't the only reason to to be optimistic for the Brooks-less Ducks, however long they remain that way. Save some ongoing turnover woes, forward Jordan Bell is off to a really encouraging start; he finished with 15 points and seven rebounds on 7-of-13 from the field. Dylan Ennis has yet to play the kind of offensive hoop that made him a key piece of a No. 1-seeded Villanova squad in 2014-15 (he's just 2-of-13 from 3 thus far and has one more total turnover than assist), but he is already guarding the ball every bit as well, if not better, than he did during his tenure in Philly.

The defense was impressive overall Thursday night. Valpo is a good team, the Horizon League favorite, with arguably the nation's best mid-major player, Alec Peters, leading the way. A year ago, in Eugene, the Ducks trailed (an admittedly more experienced team not led by a first-year coach, but still) in the second half. They only narrowly escaped with a 73-67 win. Within the first few minutes of Thursday's second half, any chance of a tense repeat performance was gone.

Now the Ducks will go to Maui. On Monday, they'll tip off against a struggling Georgetown team. Wisconsin, UConn, and/or North Carolina could await them in the later rounds. There is a chance Brooks will be able to play by the time the team's presumably neon-colored charter jet touches down. There is a chance he'll play in part of the tournament, and a chance he doesn't play at all.

Make no mistake: Oregon will be better when he comes back. But until then -- whenever "then" is -- the Ducks will be just fine.