If the one thing that can be expected from an athlete and a team is improvement, then that is the foundational measure on which Oregon fans can choose to build their enthusiasm around new coach Willie Taggart, hired away from South Florida to replace Mark Helfrich.

Taggart, at 40, is not a flashy young buck. He's not a big name already being measured for the coaching Mount Rushmore. He's not a sure thing. He won't inspire Ducks fans to immediately parade through Eugene certain that Washington's rise under Chris Petersen is about to abruptly end.

Taggart owns a career record of 40-45 at Western Kentucky and South Florida. Helfrich went 37-16 at Oregon and got fired two years after playing for a national title. It's difficult not to raise a skeptical eyebrow over that.

Yet what Taggart brings is a proven record of inspiring improvement, which is the opposite of what Helfrich appeared to be doing at Oregon. In seven years as a head coach, Taggart just once produced a team that regressed -- his first year at South Florida. Every season under his care, save one, his team posted a better record than the previous year.

Taggart left Stanford, where he learned offense from Jim Harbaugh and David Shaw, to take over a beleaguered Western Kentucky program that went 2-10 and 0-12 the two seasons before his arrival. Under him, the Hilltoppers went 2-10, 7-5 and 7-5, with Taggart bolting for South Florida before a bowl game. The Bulls, who started a football program in 1997, went 3-9 in 2012 under Skip Holtz. Taggart went 2-10 -- his one regression -- 4-8, 8-5 and this fall finished 10-2.

He concluded the 2016 regular season by beating UCF 48-31 and Knights head coach Scott Frost, whom some Oregon fans might remember.

Ducks fans like offense, right? South Florida reached 30 points for the 16th consecutive time in the win over UCF. That's the nation's longest streak of 30-point games.

Oregon fans like a potent running game, right? South Florida ranked fifth in the nation with 291.8 yards rushing per game this season. The Bulls' 6.71 yards per carry ranked second in the nation, and their 44 rushing TDs ranked third.

Taggart, a native of Bradenton, Florida, is a former quarterback who likes to run the ball. He played for Harbaugh's father, Jack, at Western Kentucky, where he was a four-year starter, producing more yards on the ground than through the air, and had his jersey retired.

As noted in a Tampa Bay Times story when he was introduced as the South Florida coach, he's also a risk-taker. In a 2012 overtime win at Kentucky, he "not only went for two in the first overtime but scored on a lateral to a running back who threw back to the quarterback for the winning conversion."

On the questionable side? Defense. His best defense in seven seasons yielded 22.9 points per game in 2015 at South Florida. This year the Bulls gave up 31.0 PPG. While that's 10 points better than what the Ducks surrendered in the fall under coordinator Brady Hoke and his personnel-mismatched 4-3 scheme, it wasn't against sophisticated Pac-12 offenses with a stellar list of future NFL QBs.

That leads to the first big question: Taggart's staff. How many -- if any -- former Oregon coaches will be retained, many of whom have been in Eugene for decades? How many assistants will he bring from South Florida? And how aggressively might he pursue some A-list alternatives with a big bankroll?

Sleep likely won't be much of a priority as he crams staff hiring decisions around recruiting visits before the "dead period" begins on Dec. 12.

Taggart's recruiting chops are respected, and the coach brings plenty of experience from the talent-rich Southeast -- particularly Georgia and Florida -- as well as California. Without an even middling in-state recruiting base, the Ducks' hopes lie in recruiting nationally, though like all other Pac-12 teams the emphasis will always be Southern California.

Taggart's first true measure, his first opportunity to create momentum with his frustrated fan base, will come on Feb. 1, national signing day. A top-25 class would immediately improve his Q rating, particularly if he snags a few recruits away from Washington and USC in head-to-head battles.

Even with a signing day surge, though, Taggart won't immediately strike fear in the hearts of other Pac-12 coaches, who mostly are distracted by Washington's rise under Petersen in the North Division and USC's transformation under Clay Helton in the South. If the Ducks had lured Chip Kelly back to college football, or shocked everyone by hiring TCU's Gary Patterson or Texas A&M's Kevin Sumlin, then more worried looks would have been exchanged.

But Taggart is a solid, proven coach who checks a lot of boxes. He's twice demonstrated that he can take a bad team and make it respectable, even good. He not only provides head coaching experience; he arrives in Eugene with the valuable experience of twice taking over a program that needed a culture change, which is much different from being promoted from within or being a first-time head coach.

Taking over Oregon, however, is not what it used to be. Just ask Helfrich. If the Ducks improve to 7-5 next fall, many fans will believe themselves magnanimous for not demanding Taggart's termination. While a sober appraisal suggests that a return to averaging 11 wins per season might be far-fetched for any Pac-12 team, more than a few Oregon fans view that as the now-established standard.

Taggart's track record points toward Oregon improving, immediately and steadily. The question then will become how high that climb will be and whether it will be enough.