The 2012-13 season was the one Oregon basketball fans had been waiting for. The team finally clicked at the end of the season. Oregon won the Pac-12 tournament and then advanced to the Sweet Sixteen. Only a loss to eventual National Champion Louisville stopped Oregon from going further. Optimism was abundant. Expectations were high. And in April, I was the bearer of bad news. When I looked at the Ducks roster, I didn’t have any idea how they would make a return trip to the NCAA tournament.

True, Dana Altman had played a deep lineup.  Several returning players had game experience. But the team returned just 44 percent of its minutes from the previous season. Four of the Ducks' top five scorers were gone. And the team would have to live without one of the greatest rebounders in Oregon history in Arsalan Kazemi.

While the backcourt still looked strong, it wasn’t perfect. Dominic Artis had loads of potential, but posted an ORtg of just 93 in an injury shortened season. Meanwhile, Johnathan Loyd was dominant in the Pac-12 tournament, but for much of the season Loyd was shaky. Loyd struggled with turnovers, struggled with his perimeter shot, and posted on ORtg of just 89. And the frontcourt was decimated.

The team was going to have to build a rotation out of Waverly Austin (a former JUCO recruit with an ORtg of 86 last year), Ben Carter (a super passive player who wasn’t a good finisher around the rim) and Christiano Felicio. Felicio might be one of those international diamonds in the rough that schools like St. Mary’s and Gonzaga keep finding, or he might not be eligible. But his attempt to play high school basketball did not work out, and none of the major scouting services have even evaluated him. He is a 20-year-old mystery.

And when I first ran my projections for Oregon, the numbers looked avert-your-eyes bad. I was getting ready to tell Ducks fans to enjoy the memory of last season. After accounting for pace, Oregon’s adjusted offense was only 105.9 last year (or 84th in the nation). And with what they lost, I projected their adjusted offense to fall to a disastrous 101.0.

That isn’t to say there wasn’t some hope. Damyean Dotson is a terrific player. Jordan Bell is the 73rd ranked freshmen according to the consensus RSCI rankings. Elgin Cook is a Top 10 JUCO player. And while Jalil Abdul-Bassit wasn’t a truly elite JUCO player, he could provide solid minutes.

But Dana Altman wasn’t satisfied with a substandard Pac-12 offense. And so he went to work on the transfer recruiting trail. He added UNLV transfer Mike Moser who is eligible immediately after graduating from UNLV. Then he added Houston transfer Joseph Young. Young’s story is as complicated as any you will read. And there is a real chance he will not be eligible to play this fall. But for the purposes of the next projection, I am going to assume he receives a waiver to play this season. Finally, when Iowa St. rescinded an offer to JUCO forward Richard Amardi, Altman swooped in and recruited him too.

The result is a meaningful upgrade in Oregon’s projected offense from 101.0 to 106.8. In other words, Oregon’s offense should be even better than last year. Moser and Young are huge upgrades offensively. Moser was a Top 100 recruit out of high school and an aggressive player who should draw plenty of defensive attention. And Young is a lights out three point shooter. And adding two aggressive players allows everyone else to shoot less. Thus the efficiency of every player in the lineup sees meaningful improvement.

A quick note on Richard Amardi’s projection: Amardi isn’t as highly prized a JUCO player as Elgin Cook. But his advantage is that he has more size. Realistically, Amardi will be in a stiff competition with Bell, Carter, Austin, and Felicio for front-court minutes. But a Bell/Moser front line might be too small in some contexts, Felicio is too unknown, and given the less than impressive numbers put up by Carter (aggressiveness) and Austin (efficiency) last year, on paper Amardi has slightly higher expected production. But this is clearly a case where both team reports and intuition disagree with the numeric model. Based on familiarity (and how late in the process Oregon added Amardi), it seems likely that Carter or Austin will be the starter in November.

And that is how, in just a few short months, Altman salvaged what looked like a CBI team, and turned it into a likely NCAA tournament team.

Now after this great summer, I think some people are even higher on Oregon than what my model is projecting. But I still want to warn Ducks’ fans not to set their expectations too high. The biggest reason for concern is that last year’s defensive performance may not be repeatable. Dana Altman had never had a Top 25 defense before last year. And last year’s success had a lot to do with Arsalan Kazemi. Thanks to Kazemi, Altman had the best defensive rebounding team he has ever coached. With Kazemi gone, maintaining that level of defensive rebounding may not be possible. (And if Ken Pomeroy is right, giving up quick shots is not a sustainable long-run defensive strategy.) While the Oregon offense may be better this year, I think the defense will almost certainly take a step backward. And thus Oregon may not be able to match last year’s Sweet Sixteen run.

Three parting notes:

-Mike Moser has never had an ORtg above 101 in any season of his career. While I expect him to fully bounce-back from last year’s injury and post the best offensive season of his career, he doesn’t project as a true superstar at this point.

-The above projections are using last year’s model. My recent work on star ratings is not included yet. Nonetheless, I can say that in the new model, the big winner is Dominic Artis. The 4-star PG continues to have extremely high potential despite an injury filled freshman season. If anyone’s projection should be higher, that player would be Artis.

-The Pac-12 isn’t a pushover anymore, with eight legitimate teams likely pushing for an NCAA tournament bid. Oregon could go 10-8 in the Pac-12 and if they beat the right teams, they could still make the tournament and earn a better NCAA seed than last year.