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Dana Altman has readied up the time machine.
Let Brandon Angel tell it.
The Stanford graduate had a throng of suitors upon throwing his name into the transfer portal this past spring. A 6-foot-8 forward who shot 56 percent from the floor, nearly 45 percent from deep, started 60 games and appeared in another 49 outings?
What team wouldn’t want one of those?
The hyper-efficient 13-point-per-game-scorer is the type of player that makes coaches blush. So why, when Wisconsin and Duke were on the table, did Angel choose Dana Altman and the Oregon Ducks?
“He’s a proven winner,” Angel said of Altman at Big Ten Media Day, “and that was my biggest thing in the transfer portal was, I need to win. It’s not a want. I need to win, and I think I found that at Oregon with Coach and the history they’ve had.”
Angel, the academic all-American, has done his homework on the coach who’s gone 755-395 all-time. He was quick to point out that Altman, entering year 15 in Eugene, has never won fewer than 20 games in a season at Oregon. Angel saw it firsthand, too, running into the Ducks far more than he would have liked during Pac-12 Conference play over the years.
Thing is, while those 20-plus win seasons during Angel’s time at Stanford may have appeared rosy from afar, the feeling on the inside of Oregon’s program was one of discouragement regarding squads that repeatedly fell short of their ceilings, with injuries and a lack of continuity the prime culprits.
This go-round?
“We’re going to go back to the way we have traditionally played,” Altman told reporters last week.
Throw out the last few seasons. Oregon’s as healthy as it’s been in years, and the depth Altman and Co. have assembled gives them the ability to mimic his pre-pandemic teams.
Look out Big Ten, the Ducks are here.
“This team will try to play in the same style as our teams really before ‘21, before ‘22, ‘23, ‘24,” Altman said, “We haven’t played quite the same way but I’m hoping to get back to the way we want to play. You do something, you feel comfortable with the system and then the system changes because of injuries or personnel. But I feel very comfortable that this group can get back to playing the way we used to play.”
That means a few things. For one, onlookers will be seeing a lot more of that patented full-court press that came to define Altman teams of the mid-to-late 2010s. They’ve got the bodies to do it again, with Georgetown transfer Supreme Cook — who is set to return in mid-November — the only unavailable player at this point.
Depth concerns over the last three seasons have hampered Oregon’s ability to press, and the team’s defensive numbers have taken a hit because of it. Under Altman, the Ducks have historically won on that side of the ball. Not since 2019, however, has Oregon boasted a top-20 defensive efficiency mark (No. 13), according to KenPom. The team’s best mark over that stretch came in 2023, at 53rd overall. And while elite shooting pushed Oregon’s offensive efficiency into the top-10 in both 2020 and 2021, the Ducks just haven’t managed to put together a season-long two-way effort in quite some time.
There’s a case this group could be capable of such a feat. KenPom projects this Oregon group to finish inside the top-35 in efficiency on both ends, and Altman certainly seems bullish on such potential.
“Practices have been a lot more spirited this year,” Altman said. “The last few years all we were doing at this time was running a lot of dry stuff because we didn’t want to get anybody else hurt. The competition has been good. The guys have been working very hard, very pleased with their effort.”
Six players return from Oregon’s second-round NCAA Tournament squad, joined by seven more, including a trio of graduate transfers in Angel, TJ Bamba and Ra’Heim Moss. If it seemed like the new-aged college basketball landscape was moving too quickly for Altman the last few seasons, he has quickly shut down that discourse in putting together a roster that firmly projects among the top tier of a deep Big Ten.
Altman hasn’t lost his fastball.
Said Bamba of his decision to join this offseason: “I wanted to be pushed to an extreme that nobody has ever pushed me to.”
At 6-foot-5, with a pro build and a skillset to match, Bamba is emblematic of what makes this particular roster so fascinating. Outside of the 7-foot senior center Nate Bittle, every player boasts positional versatility which could unlock a myriad of lineups for the Ducks’ staff.
Save sophomore Jackson Shelstad — a preseason all-Big Ten team pick — and senior Keeshawn Barthelemy, every Duck stands at least 6-foot-3. Without a true center to back up Bittle, Oregon will rely on a trio of 6-foot-9 forwards in Angel, Cook and sophomore KJ Evans to spearhead small ball lineups.
The well-constructed roster gives the Ducks the opportunity to be malleable with its rotation across a daunting conference slate. According to KenPom, just three teams on Oregon’s current schedule (Texas A&M, Purdue, Illinois) rank within the top 30, but plenty more fill out the 30s and 40s, providing the Ducks fewer nights off and further generating the need for depth.
Nine of the Ducks’ 13 scholarship players have at some point started games at the Division I level. How quickly this particular group gels may hinge on the elasticity of the player’s egos. Can several of them thrive in reduced roles while keeping comparable efficiency?
After questions swirled this offseason about how Oregon will adjust to its new conference, it’s beginning to appear, not unlike Dan Lanning’s football program, the Ducks can hit the Big Ten running.
Oregon, itself, will begin getting a sense of this group’s potential on Nov. 4, when UC Riverside rolls into town. Until then? The re-energized Altman will be holding his breath, hoping a finally healthy roster remains just that.
— Shane Hoffmann, The I-5 Corridor
