Other articles by Greg Hansen:

Greg Hansen Sunday Notebook : Black learns golf's secret Greg Hansen : Tubac's 'Triangle' a 'Wreck' for golfers Greg Hansen : First stop Indianapolis Greg Hansen : Historically, 44th draft picks have brief or no NBA history Greg Hansen Sunday Notebook : USC, O'Neill a good fit Greg Hansen : For Miller, hard work is a legacy from father Greg Hansen: El Rio's No. 8 tee shot is intimidating Greg Hansen : ASU's Tucson pipeline pumps as rich as ever Greg Hansen : Tucson's Tyler appears calm before the storm at Bethpage Greg Hansen : Friends for life reunite

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By this time in 2010, Oregon will likely be picking over Arizona's sorry carcass, pausing neither to feel pity nor to offer encouragement during the total reconstruction of UA hoops.

But I still think the Wildcats are in a better place, with a more promising future, than Ernie Kent's Ducks.

Arizona's 67-52 victory over Oregon on Thursday night is of little consequence here or in Drizzleworld. The Wildcats are good enough to thump a bad Oregon team and maybe play .500 in the Pac-10. And, hey, they have a good excuse for doing so.

The Ducks don't have an excuse. They didn't store any nuts for the winter, failing to plan ahead, unable to make a move to the league's No. 2 slot vacated by long-time powerhouses Arizona and Stanford.

Kent is the longest-tenured coach in the Pac-10, but he's limping through Year 12 with a team of beginners and role players at a time, ideally, the Ducks should have had a system in place to maintain strength rather than fall back and rebuild again.

This is good for Arizona, which figures to take the 2009-10 season to regroup under a new coach — Rick Pitino, anybody? — and then resume its chase for the Pac-10's No. 2 power slot behind UCLA.

The all-but-anonymous Ducks who showed up at McKale on Thursday were woefully unlike most of those high-scoring, beat-you-to-100 outfits that we have come to enjoy watching.

"They were almost unstoppable,'' UA junior Chase Budinger said of his previous engagements against the Ducks. "This wasn't like Oregon. It was kinda nice.''

The Ducks were an accommodating victim, if nothing else. Budinger once bounced an in-bounds pass off the backside of an Oregon defender, grabbed the ricochet and made an uncontested layup.

It's not that Kent prepared his team for an unfriendly environment. Before coming to Tucson, the Ducks played just two pure road games: at Cal-Irvine and at Utah. What kind of a schedule is that?

"They were rattled out there," said Kent. "There were just a lot of basketball plays they and the upperclassmen didn't make on the court."

What else could he say? Sooner or later the bill comes due when you've left yourself with a young team unfamiliar with duress; the Ducks got the check Thursday night.

And it's not just Oregon. The entire Pac-10 has been slow on the uptake since Arizona fell from power two years ago. Oregon's inability to remain a contender — the Ducks have suffered no early entry losses to the NBA since point guard Luke Ridnour six years ago — reflects the entire league.

Washington was good, then bad, and is now average.

Wazzu won 26 games two years in succession and is now struggling mightily.

Rising to power briefly, ASU might fall off the map when James Harden leaves school, probably in May.

USC has essentially become the league's No. 2 franchise by default, although my money is on new Cal coach Mike Montgomery to ultimately do what the Ducks, Huskies and Cougars have been unable to do, which is: sustain excellence.

Even if Budinger and junior center Jordan Hill exit the program this year, Thursday's game was a positive harbinger for UA fans and the next Wildcat coach. It shouldn't take long for Arizona to get back near the top once the new coach signs a pair of recruiting classes.

I'm writing this because I really thought Oregon had a chance to break through and establish itself as an elite basketball school. It has the requisite local support, nice proximity to the California and Seattle recruiting markets, a $200million arena due to open in 2011 and more money than the Rockefellers. What else do you need?

But Kent is just 100-101 in Pac-10 games (64-92 if you don't count years of walkovers against Oregon State and Wazzu), and you've almost got to think the Oregon you've seen is going to be the Oregon of the future.

Good every third or fourth year. Not much in between.

In a season in which encouragement has been in short supply at McKale, the Ducks came along just when the Wildcats needed a boost.

"We'll move through the tough times and enjoy the good times,'' Arizona interim head coach Russ Pennell said. "And at the end we'll see how it turns out.''

Thursday night was a good time. Arizona has the Ducks to thank for that.