The I-5 Thoughts: On Da Costa's debut, Altman's wild February, PSU's return home and perfection on The Bluff

I finally answered my own question about Dana Altman.

PORTLAND — So, I think it’s fair to say David Da Costa’s debut with the Timbers on Sunday got drowned out a bit.

One part was the rain.

Another part was his playing time.

And, well, there was the whole thing about the Timbers getting their doors blown off in a 4-1 season-opening loss to Vancouver.

However, anyone who was at Providence Park on Sunday saw the energy change when the Timbers’ newest designated player took the pitch to start the second half. While Da Costa was the smallest guy out there, he took little time to announce his presence. His first touch was a beautiful crossing pass to Kevin Kelsy for a header on net, which he quickly followed with a drawn foul and some strong efforts getting back on defense.

The crowd cheered each of his touches and the Timbers, playing a man down, seemed to feed off it.

“I was impressed with how as soon as he came on the field, everybody seemed to get confidence from him,” manager Phil Neville said. “That’s what the DPs bring you. They bring you the extra bit of quality and confidence and belief.”

Granted, the Timbers could have used that for the full match. Neville said had Da Costa’s visa been approved a day or two sooner, the 24-year-old would have likely started. Neville said that’ll happen on Saturday against Austin FC at home—a positive for a club that’s resembling more of a MASH unit than a soccer club here in the early stages of the season.

Neville expects defender Dario Zuparic to miss at least two to three more games, forward Santiago Moreno to miss two to three more weeks, and while Juan Mosquera was technically available on Sunday, he didn’t play because Neville said the young defender has only a handful of training sessions under his belt as he works his way into fitness. Also, there’s still no timetable for the Timbers’ other designated player, Jonathan Rodriguez, in his return from a knee injury.

In other words, the Timbers are going to start putting a lot on the small shoulders of their newest star.

“It felt like Da Costa came on and he lifted not just the team, he lifted the whole stadium,” Neville said.

You can go home again

Sunday’s match was the wettest game I’ve attended in the state of Oregon since a game at Providence Park a decade ago. Then, it was the Portland State football team hosting the Montana Grizzlies on Halloween of 2015, a game in which the Vikings thumped my alma mater 35-16 in front of 11,045 fans. That was also the day that I was first introduced to the term “Atmospheric river.”

Here’s the proof, courtesy of this video I took of a stadium employee fighting a losing battle with his squeegee.

Yes, it was wet. It was also a blast. The Montana fans showed up in droves, filling nearby bars such as Marathon Taverna — some in costume, most in Montana maroon — in anticipation for the game.

That was a stellar season for the Vikings. It was Barnum’s first year as coach and the win improved the Vikings’ record to 7-1 in a season that would end in the second round of the FCS playoffs with a No. 10 national ranking.

And even though players would have benefitted from snorkels attached to their helmets, it’s rarely been that good for the program in the decade since. Due to the rising popularity of the Timbers and Thorns, which created myriad scheduling issues, Portland State hasn’t stepped foot inside Providence Park since 2018. Since 2019, the Vikings have called Hillsboro Stadium — a 7,600-seat high school stadium 14 miles from campus — their full-time home.

While the Vikings have done their best to try to entice fans out to the suburbs — remember that time Barnum footed the beer bill for everyone in the stands? — the lack of an in-city home for the in-city college has made Portland State one of the most challenging jobs in college football.

But yet, there appears to be some sun on the horizon. The Vikings will be hosting a press conference at Providence Park today at 2 p.m. where they’re expected to announce a return to the stadium for one game on the 2025 schedule.

Timbers home games on Sept. 27 and Oct. 18 will likely keep PSU games against Northern Arizona and Weber State out in Hillsboro, but as of now, Aug. 23 against Tarleton State, Nov. 8 against Sacramento State and Nov. 15 against Montana are open on the calendar.

We’ll find out more this afternoon.

One more on the rain

It was during the first college basketball road trip I did for The Oregonian back in 2015 as I walked around the sunny campus of the University of Arizona that I came to a realization that I still stand by today:

The fact that the state of Oregon produces multiple competitive college baseball teams — including an Oregon State program that has won three College World Series titles — is one of the most impressive accomplishments in NCAA sports.

Down there, baseball practices were just getting underway under sunny skies and temperatures sat in the 70s. I was dumbstruck at the time that the Beavers, Ducks and Pilots could recruit anyone to come play the first few months of their seasons in the rain.

I was reminded of this on Sunday.

As I drove to Providence Park for the Timbers opener, I listened to the first inning of the Oregon/Rhode Island game on the radio. Four hours later when I drove home from Providence Park, I listened to the third inning of the Oregon/Rhode Island game on the radio.

All that was in between was a casual 2-hour and 48-minute rain delay.

The Ducks would eventually win 15-2 in seven innings — the teams mutually agreed on a 10-run rule before the game — to improve their record to 6-2 on the year.

They’re the No. 11 team in the country. Oregon State is sitting at No. 9 with a 5-2 record.

And that, my friends, still blows me away.

Perfection on The Bluff

Photo courtesy of Portland Pilots

Reading that last section, you might have been surprised that I looped the Portland Pilots in with the Beavers and Ducks.

The Pilots are a Division 1 program, one that certainly hasn’t reached the same levels of success as their larger-school counterparts. However, on Tuesday the Pilots did something that’s only happened once before in this state’s D1 baseball history.

They were perfect.

Ryan Rembisz, a left-handed pitcher from Woodinville, Wash., became the 21st pitcher in D1 NCAA history to throw a nine-inning perfect game. Rembisz struck out 12 batters in Portland’s 8-0¹ win over Seattle U, throwing only 90 pitches to join Oregon State’s Drew Rassmussen (2015) as the only pitchers in our state’s history to face the minimum of 27 batters.

The best part: Two days after the Ducks’ marathon in Eugene, Tuesday night’s contest on The Bluff played under partly sunny skies and clocked in at a brisk 2 hours and 21 minutes.

There were 127 lucky fans in attendance to witness history.

The Rereadables: Does Dana Altman have a final Oregon act in him?

Dana Altman looked beat on Saturday.

It was his Oregon Ducks who weren’t, though.

The 66-year-old Oregon coach had just led his men’s basketball squad to one of its more improbable wins of the season, where the Ducks erased a 16-point deficit, on the road, to take down No. 11 Wisconsin. It was Oregon’s fourth win in a row following a six-game losing streak, one that continued to cement Oregon’s standing in the NCAA Tournament. Nate Bittle scored 23 points. Jackson Shelstad called glass. And Altman, who has seemingly been battling a cold for much of this season, sucked down a bottle of water as Madison reporters asked him questions such as “Is it hard for a West Coast team to play this early out East?”

“Hey,” Altman said. “We wanted to be in the Big Ten. We asked to be in the league. We’re not complaining about travel. We’re not complaining about anything. We’ve made a few trips. Our guys have enjoyed the new atmospheres and different places to play…Players want to play good teams and Wisconsin is a really good team. We just caught fire there in the second half and that happens. You get on a little roll, the game changes momentum and that’s simply what happened.”

Catch fire. Get on a little roll. Momentum changed.

Does anybody know how that works better this time of the year than Altman?

It was three years ago when I wrote the column headlined: Does Dana Altman have a final Oregon act in him?

The Ducks had just failed to reach the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year as the, at the time, Pac-12 reshaped around him with powerful coaches such as Tommy Lloyd at Arizona and Mick Cronin.

In 2025, Altman’s Ducks have less losses than Lloyd’s Wildcats and the same (8) as Cronin’s Bruins — a coach who, so far into his Big Ten era, has rarely missed out on an opportunity to complain about something.

Earlier in the year it was throwing his players under the bus. More recently, it was complaining about the travel schedule.

“We’ve got to get home,” Cronin said after a recent game in Seattle. “We’re going to get home at two in the morning, three in the morning. We should’ve just had this game at midnight. I mean, when you sell your soul to television, that’s just the way it is. That’s college sports. We’ve sold our soul to television.”

Altman doesn’t seem concerned with souls. He seems concerned about playing basketball. So, to answer the question I asked three years ago:

Yes, I believe Altman does have that final Oregon act in him.

— Tyson Alger, The I-5 Corridor

1. I had 1-0 there for some reason on the draft I sent out. I guess we can’t all be perfect.