Dana Altman admits that he is tired.

Altman sees that his players “look tired,” too.

Exhausted to the point where the energy levels at practice before their Senior Night game against Utah was, in the eyes of Altman, uncharacteristically zapped, given the occasion.

That being said, the head coach who’s nearing the end of his 14th season at Oregon — his 14th 20-win season, for that matter — can’t blame them.

“I’m extremely disappointed that we’re not in a different position,” he said, following the Ducks' 66-65 win over the Utes on Saturday, “but I’m not mad at those guys. I didn’t bring them along. I’m mad at myself. I haven’t got them to understand how we win games with these eight guys.”

Well, now push has come to shove. Oregon enters the Pac-12 tournament with a rotation of eight survivors — a chance to win out and avoid a three-year drought without a NCAA tournament bid.

There’s a few problems, though.

The No. 4-seeded Ducks (20-11) haven’t strung together three straight wins since the beginning of January when they opened Pac-12 play going 5-0. They will likely have to go through top-seeded Arizona before they even reach the championship (barring a quarterfinals stumble by the Wildcats). And, the Ducks are thin, so injury-riddled that Altman’s employed overly cautious practices — ones he feels “don’t prepare us” — scared that a key rotation player will sustain an injury in live drills only to have no replacement.

Altman did offer one note of positivity:

N’Faly Dante’s not tired.

That’s crucial because, “With Dante, you always got a chance,” Altman said.

Dante scored 19 points, missing just one shot, and pulled down 12 rebounds on Saturday. He was a perfect 10 of 10 from the field Thursday.

But his greatest quality?

“He’s so unselfish,” guard Jermaine Couisnard said. “He looks for others, but he’s dominating the game in all different ways.”

Dante might be looking to kick the ball out of the paint once it gets crowded, but there’s little movement on the perimeter to present an adequate option. Oregon’s guard play has looked a tick under the level of its competition since that five-game winning streak in early January.

Maybe they’re drained from overcompensating for ailing teammates. Maybe that injury-bug — which charts as a stark outlier — has prevented the Ducks from building any semblance of continuity.

At least that’s Dante’s diagnosis.

“Me and some of my teammates have a connection,” he said. “But it could be way better. It would have helped if I was playing at the beginning of the season.”

Throughout Dante’s time as the program’s building block, hypotheticals like that have dominated press conferences when big-picture questions are posed. But those theories — fantastical what-ifs that could have altered the outcome of Dante’s time at Oregon — are running out of shelf life.

They seem overused, but in reality, the big man who’s achieved individual success is explaining the reality of his team’s shortcomings to himself. The Ducks haven’t made the NCAA tournament with Dante as their go-to guy and this Pac-12 tournament -- starting Thursday against either No. 5-seed UCLA or No. 12 Oregon State -- presents as their last chance.

For efforts to not fall futile, Altman has to teach these eight how to win with one another. He has to show them how to slow down a Bruins team that beat them 71-63 on Feb. 3, or potentially a Beavers team that will want to end its cross-state rival’s season. He has to play the clips from Arizona’s 13-point loss to USC where the Trojans made Oumar Ballo a scorer and held Caleb Love to 2 points.

Instead, he spent last week reminiscing with EJ Singler and going over defensive schemes with Dillon Brooks, both of whom were in town.

But Altman can’t really be faulted for this.

Not entirely. Not when he’s tired. Not when he needs a respite from a season that has so eerily replicated the previous two.

That hot start to the Ducks' conference schedule affords them much-needed rest time as they earned a first-round bye and won’t start their quest for an automatic bid until 2:30 p.m. on Thursday.

But there's no more margin for error from there.