Dorsey: AP / Kansas bench: AP

Kansas and Oregon will meet Saturday in the NCAA tournament's Elite Eight.

It’s deja vu for the Ducks.

For the second consecutive NCAA men’s basketball tournament, Oregon will play a top Big 12 team, led by a national candidate for player of the year, for a chance to advance to the Final Four.

Third-seeded Oregon’s reward for earning a school-record 32nd victory Thursday in the Sweet 16 against No. 7 Michigan is to play Kansas, the top seed in the Midwest Region, on Saturday in Kansas City, just 40 miles from the Jayhawks’ campus.

The Jayhawks advanced Thursday by turning a seven-point halftime lead against Purdue into a 98-66 blowout by smothering the Boilermakers’ big men in the second half. Purdue forward Caleb Swanigan, one of the best big men in the country all season, took just 11 shots, with three of his six field goals coming inside the three-point arc.

Kansas is athletic, boasts a surefire NBA lottery pick and has a blue-blood pedigree. Oregon, however, hasn’t allowed the loss of Chris Boucher to hinder its path through the tournament, finding a way to win tough games in the rounds of 32 and 16.

Both programs have lost just twice since Feb. 1.

Tip-off Saturday is 5:49 p.m. PT, on TBS. What could be in store?

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Chris Pietsch/AP/Register-Guard

Dana Altman won't be intimidated by Kansas

There are plenty of reasons why Dana Altman will be concerned about the matchup with Kansas, but the Jayhawks’ reputation won’t be one of them. Altman coached and recruited against KU for four seasons while Kansas State's head coach from 1990-94 and is 2-8 all-time against the Jayhawks.

One of those victories, however, was an upset of No. 1 KU on the road at Allen Fieldhouse in 1994.

Altman’s comments after that game will likely be similar to what he says in advance of Saturday’s.

"Hey, this is Kansas," Altman said in 1994, per the AP. "We don't care about rankings."

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Given an opening, Kansas can pull ahead in a hurry

Entering this year’s tournament, Kansas was defined by its ability to win the close ones. It’s 9-3 in games decided by five or fewer points, with six of those wins coming away from its home court, and is 7-2 in games in which it’s trailed by double digits. Lately, however, Kansas has turned close games into routs, which hints at the Jayhawks’ soaring level of confidence entering their Elite Eight matchup with the Ducks. This is the highest-scoring Kansas teams since 2001-02 and until KU this season, no team had scored 90-plus points in each of its first three games of an NCAA tournament since Connecticut in 1995.

In the round of 32, KU was tied with Michigan State at 27 with 5 minutes, 2 seconds remaining in the half before outscoring the Spartans 63-43 the rest of the way.

Thursday in the Sweet 16, KU trailed Purdue by eight points with 6:50 remaining in the first half. Then the game flipped, with the Jayhawks outscoring the Boilermakers 76-33 en route to a 98-66 win.

"When we play on both ends of the floor like we have in this tournament," freshman forward Josh Jackson said, "I do not think there is a team that can play with us."

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ESPN RPI Wins vs. Top-25 teams Vs. teams rated 26-50 Vs. teams rated 51-100 Strength of schedule Kansas 6-2 2-0 8-2 35 Oregon 2-3 2-0 13-1 44

Comparing rsums

ESPN’s RPI ratings were last updated before the Pac-12 tournament final, when Oregon was 28-5 and Kansas 28-4, so this obviously doesn’t include NCAA tournament results. But the RPI, if incomplete, at least offers a picture of the path each team took to reaching March madness.

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Charlie Riedel/AP

An obvious key: Containing Frank Mason

One year after Oregon’s defense couldn’t contain Oklahoma guard Buddy Hield in the Elite Eight, the Ducks will now be tasked with guarding another elite guard in Big 12 player of the year Frank Mason.

Mason, a candidate for national player of the year, is coming off one of his most complete games this season, scoring 25 points with seven rebounds and seven assists in the Sweet 16 win against Purdue. Per ESPN Stats & Info, he's just the sixth player to record a stat line like that in the NCAA tournament since 1984, when assists became official.

Mason's season averages — 20.8 points, 5.1 assists, 4.1 rebounds and 47.2 percent shooting from three — also place him among select company. Only six guards since 1992-93 have averaged at least 20, 5, 4 and 40 percent shooting from deep, per Sports-Reference.com (a list that includes Damon Stoudamire).

After starring at Portland's Jefferson High, Michael Lee played at Kansas with fellow Portland native Aaron Miles, who became an all-time great KU point guard. Lee -- now the basketball coach at Roosevelt High -- told the Kansas City Star on Thursday, however, that Mason might be the Jayhawks' best ever to play the position.

"If Aaron wasn't my best friend, I would say Frank (Mason) is the best point guard ever," Lee told the Star, "at least in my window of time watching KU."

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Ronald Martinez/Getty

Will Oregon try to run with Kansas?

Purdue had one of the tallest and most talented front lines in the country with 6-9 Caleb Swanigan and 7-2 Isaac Haas, so it made sense for the Boilermakers to try to establish a slow-it-down style on the Jayhawks. And it worked for most of the first half, until Kansas figured out how to pick apart the defense in the half-court using high ball screens, and then turned its defensive stops into transition points that showed off the full arsenal of KU's athleticism. Oregon doesn't have the height of Purdue, and without Chris Boucher, its regular rotation goes seven deep, which makes the question of how Altman will approach the matchup so interesting.

Kansas and Oregon would both rather play an uptempo game — Kansas gets about 70 possessions per game, three more than UO, per KenPom — but can UO's depth endure a track-meet pace? If Altman doesn't think so, look for him to use Oregon's considerable athleticism to UO's advantage in different ways, such as adding some variants of his press to slow down the game.

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Kansas strengths

By the KenPom.com numbers, Kansas is most dangerous from behind the three-point line, shooting 41.1 percent as a team, even though it doesn’t attempt threes with the frequency of, say, Michigan. Mason, 6-2 guard Devonte’ Graham, 6-8 forward Josh Jackson, 6-5 forward Lagerald Vick and 6-8 guard/forward Sviatoslav Mykhailiuk each have attempted at least 87 three-pointers this season and are shooting at least 37 percent on them.

It's no fluke the Jayhawks made 15 three-pointers against Purdue, a school NCAA tournament record.

Shooting such a high percentage has allowed Kansas to create lineups where four players are deep threats, which in turn spreads out a defense and creates opportunities to drive to the hoop with fewer help defenders.

Combined with the country’s 35th-highest offensive rebounding percentage, which creates second-chance opportunities, and KU is scoring one of the highest per-possession rates nationally at 1.2. Against Purdue in the second half Thursday, that figure was an eye-popping 1.4.

Landen Lucas, KU’s 6-10, 240-pound senior center who grew up partially in Portland, is one of the top offensive rebounders in the country, while Graham, Jackson and Mason each can get their own shot.

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Kansas weaknesses

When the Jayhawks began Big 12 play in January, coach Bill Self pointedly called out his guards' perimeter defense as lackluster. Self's concern was that not only were his guards not aggressive enough forcing steals — KU's steals percentage ranks 274th nationally, per KenPom — they were allowing three pointers and drives to the basket that threw the team's interior defensive rotations out of order.

Nearly three months later, the Jayhawks have settled down and are allowing opponents to shoot 35.3 percent from three-point range, just a tick above the national average. In the first two games of the tournament, Kansas opponents shot a combined 12-of-43 from deep. And yet: Oregon will surely look at the 10 three-pointers made by Purdue (on 27 attempts) as a sign the Ducks will have opportunities to get open for threes Saturday.

Other potential areas for Oregon to take advantage include free throws. The Jayhawks rank among the country’s lower third in reaching the free-throw line and shoot 67.6 percent when they do.

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MORRY GASH/AP

And finally, some Kansas-Oregon trivia

Oregon is 3-4 all-time against Kansas, with the teams meeting just once in the NCAA tournament, during Kansas' 104-86 win in the 2002 Elite Eight.

Senior KU center Landen Lucas graduated from Beaverton's Westview High School, and his father, Richard, played at Oregon from 1987-91.

In 1947, Kansas became the first opponent from east of the Rocky Mountains to play at Oregon's McArthur Court — 20 years after Mac Court opened.

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How to watch Oregon and Kansas in the Elite Eight

When: Saturday, 5:49 p.m. PT

Where: Kansas City, Mo.

Channel: TBS

Watch online: NCAA March Madness Live

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Need more coverage leading into Saturday?

Follow the work of The Oregonian/OregonLive in Kansas City.

Tyson Alger's game story from Oregon's close win against Michigan

John Canzano's column on UO's ability to escape from trouble time and again

Photo gallery: Oregon takes down Michigan to reach second straight Elite Eight

A 2015 profile of Landen Lucas and his path from Oregon to Kansas