Oregon steps to the plate. The Ducks baseball team did something they haven’t done since 1981: start 4-0. The wins came despite playing in Hawaii in front of a rowdy and passionate fan base and some serious wind. Throughout the series, the Ducks were able to hit the ball. Ryon Healy (8-15), was recognized with Pac-12 Player of the Week honors. 

On Wednesday, coach George Horton and J.J. Altobelli met with the media to reflect on the sweep and talk about their upcoming series against Loyola Marymount.

***

Freshman point guard Dominic Artis was leading the Ducks basketball team during what looked like a very promising year before hurting his foot. Without Artis, the Ducks have struggled, tallying three of their five losses. Junior guard Johnathan Loyd has filled in, but Oregon is an obviously weaker team without their rookie point guard. The Emerald’s Jackson Long talks about the implications of not having D.A. on the court. 

***

Associate Athletic Director Vin Lananna recently spoke with Curtis Anderson of The Register-Guard about his ideas to improve TrackTown. Lananna is aiming high in his efforts to recruit the 2019 IAAF World Championships, a meet that has never been held in the United States, to Eugene. 

***

JJ Hickson recently apologized for his #girlbye tweets. The Blazers center took to Twitter over Valentine’s Day to give fans advice on how to break up with women, which wasn’t well received. Hickson also gave a shout-out to strippers. 

Oregon baseball came into the season with high expectations, much like its 2011 campaign. Unlike 2011, this year’s team seems up to the challenge. Head coach George Horton has always tried to build his team around pitching and defense, something this team, as well as teams in the past, have had. The difference with this squad is its ability to rip the cover off of the ball.

Oregon had a great offensive series against Hawaii. Overall the team hit .293 in the four games, with three players hitting at least .400 over the four-game stretch in an unfriendly environment. The team had to travel to Hawaii and deal with jet lag, a raucous fanbase and heavy wind.

“The trade winds, their coach said he had never seen anything like it for three-straight days,” Horton said.

For J.J. Altobelli, the trip was more than just a road series. This was his fourth year playing in Hawaii, and he’s had been so successful against them he earned the nickname “the Rainbow Killer.” Last week he commented on how Oregon has never been able to get the sweep, and he wanted to get the sweep in his last opportunity. He did just that, helping Oregon win by hitting .462 and making a few huge plays in the outfield despite wind that pushed the ball in strange directions. In the final game he went 3-4 with two RBI to help Oregon get to 4-0 on the season, their best start since 1981.

“Everyone was swinging the bat well,” Altobelli said. “Our numbers aren’t even a good comparison to how well we swung it because the wind knocked some balls down. It’s really encouraging to see our work in practice is paying off.”

The most impressive player over the series was Ryon Healy, who hit .533 for the series with a .588 on-base percentage and .933 slugging percentage. His impressive outings earned him Pac-12 Player of the Week honors, just the eighth time an Oregon player had received the award.

“It was just a big honor,” Healy said. “But I think that the team made it possible for anyone to be successful. We all played great together and that’s what made us win four games out in Hawaii.”

The Ducks are hoping that Healy’s weekend wasn’t just a fluke, and that he can become a focal point of an offense that can join an already dominant pitching staff and defense.

A big part of the potent offense comes in the form of Steven Packard, who was away the past two years on a church mission. Packard had an impressive fall, not missing a beat despite the two-year absence, and hit .273 against the Rainbows.

“We have a lot of high expectations for Steven,” Horton said. “He had a very solid freshman year and then went on a church mission. He came back and looked like he hadn’t missed a beat. He is swinging the heck out of the ball, and we expected that. When you come back from a church mission, you come back as a real man. He was mature as a freshman so we expected him to come back and really add something.”

The players and coaching staff say that their strong offensive play in Hawaii is something that can be expected to stay around all season, and they are looking forward to proving that to their home crowd this weekend when they take on Loyola Marymount at PK Park.

“I am so excited,” Healy said. “Walking into the field yesterday and having all the banners back up, it was very exciting. I think we are going to have even more adrenaline this weekend, to be honest.”

The speculation that started when Chip Kelly took the head coaching job in Philadelphia came to fruition today when it was announced that former Oregon quarterback Dennis Dixon would be joining Kelly with the Eagles.

Dixon’s agent, Jeff Sperbeck, tweeted Thursday that Dixon would be signing a two-year deal.

Dennis Dixon (aka #swoosh10) has agreed to terms to fly with the @eagles. #greatfit

— Jeff Sperbeck (@jeffsperbeck) February 14, 2013

Dixon played for the Ducks when Kelly was the offensive coordinator in 2007 and was a Heisman candidate before sustaining an ACL injury in an upset loss against Arizona in November 2007. He was drafted by the Steelers in the fifth round of the 2008 NFL Draft, with whom he spent most of his time buried in the depth chart. He started a total of three games for the Steelers. Last season he was on the practice squad for the 2013 Super Bowl Champion Baltimore Ravens.

With Dixon’s familiarity with Kelly’s offensive schemes, there is no reason to think he couldn’t compete for the backup role at quarterback.

Baseball season is upon Eugene again. The team that came so close to heading to Omaha last season will have another shot. With Jimmie Sherfy, J.J. Altobelli, and Jake Reed, there are many reasons to be excited about the season. Here are five:

Techno Chicken

At times last season, the Ducks seemed to be destined for a loss. The air would be sucked from PK Park as fans hung their heads in silence. Then suddenly, flashing lights appeared on the scoreboard and music blared through the speakers: Techno Chicken. Everyone would perk up. Fans, players, coach George Horton, everyone. And, somewhat comically, more often than not, it worked. This season should have plenty of opportune moments for that dancing chicken.

J.J. Altobelli

“J.J.’s not going to be a guy who puts up huge numbers,” Horton said of the fourth-year player, “but he moves runners, he executes. The real good news is that J.J. is going to be our shortstop, and what a spectacular shortstop he is.”

Altobelli is a perfect candidate to have that perfect senior season. He has played against the top teams, he has been in pressure situations, and he knows how to react to them. He also has fuel. Last season, he wasn’t close enough to make a play on that blooper down the left field line that ended the Ducks’ season, but he was close enough to be affected by it. This year, Altobelli will serve as the clubhouse veteran, helping bring up the freshmen and make some big plays while he’s at it.

The expectations

Oregon has huge expectations heading into the year. They came one shallow pop fly away from going to Omaha last season, and the Ducks’ younger players have only become more mature. However, expectations on this team can work against them. In 2011, they had pretty high expectations as well, and they never even sniffed achieving them.

This season will be tough; they have a brutal schedule. Fortunately for fans, the Ducks should show their true colors early on with tough series against Vanderbilt, Cal State Fullerton and Arizona coming early in the schedule.

Since the entire year is chock-full of top-tier opposition, the Ducks will also have plenty of opportunity to bounce back from a tough loss with a big win.

The starting pitchers

The Ducks have incredible pitching this season. Their starters, Cole Irvin, Jeff Gold, Jake Reed and Tommy Thorpe, who may be moved into the bullpen at some point during the year, should be able to go toe-to-toe with just about any lineup in the country.

Irvin, the lone freshman in the group, impressed Horton so much in January that he earned a spot in the starting rotation.

“Maturity, commitment, he’s well ahead of the learning curve,” Horton said of Irvin. “He learned the system faster than all of the other freshmen. He looks like a junior out there pitching. He’s real comfortable, has great presence, has plus command, makes his three pitches effectively. He had great credentials being a Team USA guy coming in, and he hasn’t disappointed us one bit.”

The Wild Thing

Oregon has something that most teams don’t: an elite closer. And he isn’t just elite or an All-American. He is those things, but he is also a guy that can hit 94 mph on the gun.

Much like Techno Chicken, the Wild Thing, also known as Jimmie Sherfy, is something to be feared by the opponent. “Wild Thing,” the old Troggs song, fills the park as he takes the mound. His long hair and aggressive pitching style are intimidating, but it isn’t just his appearance or entrance song that make him feared. He has the stuff to back it up.

Last year he led the conference with 19 saves. He struck out 93 batters in 61 innings, and, again — 94 mph.

“Other teams are like, ‘Okay, some guy who’s 5’10″, 160 pounds, whatever.’ But then he’s 92-95 (mph) with a slider you can’t touch,” fellow pitcher Christian Jones said.

E.J. Singler doesn’t come from an average background. In his immediate family, you can find three other Division I athletes. His father, Ed, was a quarterback for Oregon State. His mom, Kris, played basketball for the Beavers. His brother Kyle had a brilliant career at Duke University and now plays for the Detroit Pistons. The list doesn’t stop there. Singler has a long list of NCAA athletes on both his mother’s and father’s sides. In a sense, he was destined to be a college athlete.

Over the course of his senior season, Singler has asserted himself as the undisputed leader of the Oregon men’s basketball team. He didn’t do this by telling everyone that he takes the reins now with Garrett Sim and Joevan Catron gone — he did it through his play in pressure situations.

It has become rare to see a game Singler doesn’t put his stamp on, and he does it in various ways. He doesn’t always do it by trying to score, either. Sometimes it’s an assist or an offensive rebound or forcing a turnover. Either way, down the stretch the Ducks look to Singler.

It would be easy to credit his knack for making the right play at the right time to whom he played against growing up, but Singler says it just developed naturally over the past four years.

“I’ve always been the kind of player that likes the ball in his hands in crunch time,” Singler said. “Now, as a senior, I think it’s kind of my role and what I have to do to help out team in crunch time. I’ve been through it the most. I know the players have confidence in me, and I know the coaches have confidence in me, and they want the ball in my hands down the stretch.”

Surely his ability to make heady plays in pressure moments has grown over the course of four seasons, but discounting his environment growing up might be a bit hasty.

“He grew up in a very athletic family,” Ed Singler, E.J.’s father, said. “He grew up in an environment that was very competitive, whether it was his brother or his cousins. I think his brother helped make him the competitor that he is today, but it wasn’t just Kyle. It was the people he hung around and the programs he was involved with.”

Each year, Singler has made it harder and harder for coaches to pull him off of the court. It isn’t that he puts up gaudy numbers — 11 points, five rebounds and three assist — but rather it’s his intangibles. Each year he has better grasped how to make the most appropriate play at the time. It is easy to see how much respect his coaches and teammates have for him because of the type of player that he is. His father said he saw the same progression over the four years he played at South Medford High School.

“He progressed each and every year,” Ed Singler said of his son. “By the time E.J. was a senior he was the leader, he had the most experience, he was game tested. Through the years that he had played varsity basketball and the players that he played with competitively, he was ready to take on that role. So the same is kind of true at Oregon. E.J. came on at Oregon much like he did at South Medford High School.”

It is easy to look at the Ducks and say that to this point they have overachieved, even with the recent three-game losing streak. They got much better play than expected out of freshman Dominic Artis and Damyean Dotson, but they’re a ranked team because of Singler.

“Oregon couldn’t have a better leader than E.J. Singler,” his father said. “He’s rock solid, he leads by example on and off the court and he is a great representative not only for the basketball program, but for the school.”