Oregon Needs Will Richardson to Return to Form Entering Final Stretch of Regular Season

The Ducks' leading scorer hasn't played with his usual fire of late.

Oregon’s starting guard Will Richardson has had an up-and-down season. I asked my friend, Josh, who is a big Oregon basketball fan, what he thinks of Richardson's recent play. Josh told me that he thinks that the senior is playing like Payton Pritchard is still on the team. I couldn’t agree more with that statement.

For his first three years, Richardson’s role was being a support for Pritchard and Chris Duarte. Now, both of those players have left for the NBA. Before the season, people pegged Richardson to fill the shoes. He currently leads the team in scoring (15.1 PPG) and assists (3.1). However, there is some effort that is missing at times.

In the first stretch of games, Richardson went scoreless against Chaminade during a span of games where the Ducks went 7-6. Oregon was off to a discouraging start and people thought that there wasn’t anyone to

Then from New Year's Day to Feb. 5, Richardson averaged 19 points a game while shooting 57.4% from the field and blistering 53.1% from the three-point line. His hot shooting got the Ducks an 8-1 stretch where they beat the No. 3 UCLA Bruins and the No. 5 USC Trojans in the same week.

However, at the flip of a coin a shooter can go cold and Richardson has to find a way to score when his jump shot is inevitably not going to fall for stretches. He isn’t aggressive enough with his offensive arsenal. His passiveness is my main concern because I think he misses moments to put the team on his back.

He settles for jumpshots in the midrange and from the three-point line. He can easily pumpfake a defender and get in the lane for a layup.

Richardson also leads Oregon in free-throw attempts with 3.1 per game. Which is surprising as he has failed in nine games this year to get to the free-throw line; he has done it in four of the last six games.

Against Washington State, Richardson played passively as he took only seven shots and failed to make it to the line once during the game.

Head Coach Dana Altman hopes to see the veteran guard assert himself more moving forward.

“He had a couple that he drove in there and kicked them out for threes, I thought he could have got to the rim…he’s gotta be more aggressive,” Altman said following Monday's win over Washington State.

Altman is right that Richardson doesn’t need him to be too unselfish. They need someone who can score from all levels when it's needed. Richardson needs to understand that the easiest thing he can control is his aggressiveness and there isn’t a better time for him to learn that with the Ducks facing three nationally ranked teams in the final stretch of the regular season.

If the Ducks want to be at the Big Dance in March, they will need Richardson to step up and be the leader of the team.

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