MILWAUKEE --- I could spend this column ripping Oregon guard Jason Calliste, who played a wonderful game but suffered a childish couple of final seconds on Saturday against Wisconsin, twisting down an opponent out of frustration.

But I won't. It happens.

I could slam coach Dana Altman for standing by, watching his lead melt, failing to take a momentum-stopping timeout during a devastating Badgers' run to start the second half.

But I won't. That also happens.

I suppose, too, I could criticize Oregon for arriving at its moment of truth late Saturday in front of a Wisconsin crowd that felt like a European soccer mob, and wilting. They let the Badgers' fans go from screaming for their spleens to singing,

"Roll out the baarrreeelll!!"

But I won't. Because dwelling on those things would distract from the painful, but true, lesson that leaving the NCAA Tournament is trying to teach the Ducks. Because there was rare value in this game.

Oregon stomped all over the cardinal rule of team sport --- it stopped being a team --- and left Milwaukee with an ingredient that every successful program needs at some point before the top: Total heartbreak.

Anyone who watched Oregon's 85-77 loss to Wisconsin (and that's what it was, a loss, rather than a Badgers' victory) knows that the more gifted, more athletic group of players did not advance to the Sweet 16. Oregon was robbed... by itself. Nobody in the Ducks locker room would say exactly that, but when the door opened, heads were down, faces were long, and it was everywhere.

Calliste was in the corner, fuming, "You guys stay away from me I'm not talking." Johnathan Loyd was across the locker room, face buried in his hands, searching for words. Richard Amardi was just shaking his head, staring off. At one point, Calliste pulled on a "CANADA" beanie cap and tried to leave the locker room but a Ducks support staffer told him, "Jason, you can't leave."

The NCAA requires him to stay in the postgame. Should have let the kid go. Really. No beef here. Calliste played his heart out, and was so frustrated with the outcome I suspect he would have jogged out into the Bradley Center and sprinted the arena stairs until he puked. I suspect his teammates would have followed him up to the 400-level if they thought it would have made a difference.

Tough loss. Total frustration. Season cut short by a less talented, but more organized, more galvanized outfit that Oregon could have dribbled circles around in a skills competition. That's really what this loss was about for the Ducks. If the program is ready to get real, and acknowledge where it fell short (including that mystery midseason funk) it must accept that when it was at its worst, it wasn't a team.

Altman isn't a trash talker. He was asked if the best team advanced. He said, "We felt like it wouldn't have been a fluke had we won."

Watching Oregon at its worst moments this season was like watching an AAU All-Star Game. Great individual players. Exceptional skills. No real tangible feel for each other. No-look passes, great ball skills, but no sense of how it all really should come together. The play could be sweet music, then suddenly, a disorganized mess. Often one half to the next. Sometimes one possession to the next.

That happened frequently against Wisconsin.

Instead of dwelling, let's get about figuring out how Oregon can get itself through to a Sweet 16, and then a Final Four. Because instead of bashing the Ducks, and Calliste, who I happen to think is guilty of having a bad moment he likely wants back, the value in this is learning from it.

I believe with the core group of returning players, and a commitment to developing a line of talented, young recruits, Altman and the Ducks are sniffing around a deep tournament run. Will they pay attention to the lesson?

I don't believe the Ducks are going to get to a Final Four bringing in a line of renegade one-year-wonder transfers, filling needs and winging it. Even as Calliste, Joseph Young and Mike Moser accounted for 61 combined points. That model is fool's gold.

You win draft position, not regional championships, playing that way. You cut down nets when you get talented players, coach them up, and let them absorb so much basketball together, some of it even painful, that they can run the floor, eyes closed, and know whether their teammates' shoelaces are untied.

Altman is a teacher. He has the young talent coming to cultivate. While Oregon's lineup built a 14-point first-half lead draining threes and slashing to the basket, Wisconsin unwound the lead like it was a tangled yo-yo with a group of less-skilled but veteran players who have been groomed in the same system, together for 2-3 seasons. That group finished together on the floor as a team.

Down the stretch, Wisconsin's Bo Ryan threw a lineup on the floor that went senior, junior, junior, junior, sophomore. Altman rolled out a group that may have introduced themselves to each other during a timeout at the Pac-12 Tournament.

Blame Saturday's loss on the failure of Oregon to grab a defensive rebound during the back-breaking three-shot possession for the Badgers if you'd like. Blame it on fouls called by the officials. Blame it on the home-court advantage Wisconsin enjoyed.

Those things happened. But do that, and you're ignoring the fact that Oregon got beat first by better culture.

The Ducks football program has been so successful because it has fostered amazing culture. The community in Eugene is tight-knit, almost as if they've pulled a bubble over the city and curled up inside of it. That's culture.

On a big stage, Oregon having only nine combined assists on 24 made field goals is symptomatic. The Ducks had 21 assists on 27 baskets in dismissing BYU. So yeah. With the country watching, and the stage growing, one Oregon player (Young) carried the team with 29 blistering points, but I suspect only because the Ducks had no confidence they could manufacture droves of points by playing off each other.

Oregon relied totally and completely on individual effort this season. They were on borrowed time in a tournament that rewards depth, patience, and the ability to get big baskets in diverse ways.

Wisconsin's starters took 7, 8, 9, 10 and 15 shots. More than half of the Badgers 29 baskets came with an assist. Alone, they were awkward, less skilled, not all that athletic, but together, they were good enough to advance. It was like watching the Olympic Dream Team lose to Puerto Rico in the 2004 Olympic Games.

The Badgers looked so together that you could have watched Wisconsin leave the court after the game and mistakenly said, "Hey, there goes Frank Kaminsky and his four brothers."

In Oregon's locker room, amid all that pain and loss, I looked for a team. I saw 15 folding chairs with individual players sitting on them. The uniforms came off. The frowns stayed. Then, after a few minutes, Elgin Cook, a sophomore who has been a Duck for a year, rose to his feet and went from chair to chair, teammate to teammate, shaking hands, thanking them for a good season.

Cook wants to be on a team.

It's a start. I loved it. Will anyone join him next season?

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