Dana Altman chuckles. It is mostly rueful, with maybe just the slightest twinge of derision. He has been asked to explain the postgame hissy fit he threw some four months ago, the one in which he lambasted the Oregon fan base and offered to happily return to coaching junior college players if his services were no longer welcome in Eugene. The “blowup’’ – that’s Altman’s term for it – came on the heels of an uninspired home loss to Wisconsin in the NIT quarterfinals that wrapped another pedestrian season for the Ducks.
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Altman admits now that he was madder at his team and at himself than at the sparse crowd – “3,300 people? That’s not good enough” – and figures, rightfully so, that the clip went viral because he was the one spewing the invective. “I don’t usually talk like that. I’m pretty vanilla,” the 65-year-old veteran coach explains.
Altman, in fact, makes vanilla seem decadent.
“That was just the frustration of the last two years,’’ Altman says. “I thought we were better than what we played like, and just like any coach, I want to maximize what we had. I don’t think we’ve done that.’’
Not too long ago, Altman mastered the art of maximizing and building his roster, steering an efficient NCAA Tournament machine. Oregon earned five consecutive bids from 2013-17, including three trips to the Sweet 16, one Elite Eight appearance and a Final Fourth berth. The Ducks, flush with their Nike cash, wild court design and fresh uniforms, would never be confused with a traditional blueblood, but they were among the steadiest of hoops’ nouveau riche.
But the last two seasons, Oregon has been ordinary – and not just on the court.
Parked in a Pac-12 in flux and ripe for the picking, the Ducks instead idled through two middling seasons. “They were good enough to be better than they were,’’ says an opposing coach whose team faced Oregon in 2022-23. He was one of four coaches granted anonymity in exchange for an honest appraisal of the Ducks. “They weren’t Final Four good. But they certainly should have been better than they were.’’
The on-court return to the mean comes at a time when Oregon’s off-court appeal has lost its uniqueness as well. Where once the Ducks stood out with their Nike swag, collectives and name, image and likeness deals now offer the same cash flow and branding opportunities at nearly every other power school.
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It would be foolish to count Oregon out, not with a top 10 recruiting class and Phil Knight partnering on the Ducks’ own collective.
Which begs a simple question and a critical follow-up: What happened? And can the Ducks get their groove back?
He drove the van to games across the plains of the U.S., shepherding his Southeast Community College team from its Fairbury, Neb., base to otherwise ignored outposts such as Hesston College in Kansas and Iowa Lakes Community College. Games were played at a nearby high school gym, and practice was held inside the National Guard Armory. A junior college player himself, Altman felt at home in the JUCO ranks, seeing in the bare bones existence a way to cut out the noise and play for the only thing that really matters – a true love for the sport.
Though he never had designs to climb the coaching ladder, he wound his way up rung by rung anyway. Now perched at the top – Oregon’s $153 million in revenues would practically cover the expenses for Southeast Community College – Altman still finds value in the junior college work ethic. But JUCOs, once popular to help rosters age quickly, have become nearly verboten. According to an NCAA study, two-year transfers now make up just 14 percent of the transfers in all D1.
One, Brennan Rigsby, will play for Altman this year. Others might question the JUCO loyalty – “There’s a reason nobody is recruiting JUCOs anymore,’’ one coach says – but Altman believes they bring exactly what has been missing from his team the last two years: a lack of entitlement. The coach won’t name names, but along with injuries, which we’ll get to in a moment, he blamed a lack of urgency for some of the Ducks’ latest travails. Where once he had to boot players from the gym, he found himself encouraging them to show up or stay later; the weight room felt less crowded than it had, or in his opinion, should. “I’m not a yeller or a screamer; I don’t curse a lot,’’ he says. “You gotta have guys who want it, and that’s maybe where things have changed. … We haven’t had that in our program the last couple of years.’’
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Some of this, according to those who had up-front seats to the Ducks last season, is inescapably a matter of poor health. Jermaine Couisnard, a transfer guard who finished as the Ducks’ second-leading scorer, didn’t take the floor until Jan. 5 following offseason knee surgery and later suffered a partial shoulder separation during the Pac-12 tournament. Another transfer guard, Keeshawn Barthelemy (left foot), missed seven weeks, and backup center Nate Bittle (foot) missed six. And then there was Will Richardson, the program’s all-time leader in games played, who missed the NIT after an MRI of an injured hip forced a shutdown. Altman told reporters that Richardson had battled to get healthy “the whole year.” Richardson nevertheless averaged 12.2 points and a career-best 5.1 assists per game, but the nagging hip issue maybe underscores why a former All-Pac-12 performer couldn’t be better.
In sum? It’s pretty hard to build a consistently functional, cohesive unit when you don’t have the players consistently available to do so. Altman doesn’t discount the effect of the injuries, but he also doesn’t use them as an out. “Two years ago it really was team chemistry,’’ he says.
The overall numbers don’t show complete off-the-cliff slippage for the Ducks, but some could be considered as evidence of more “me” than “we.” A dip in 3-point percentage might equate to a tad more selfish shot selection; an uptick in turnovers could be read as carelessness. Not everything, though, needs statistical backing. Altman sensed it within his program, and others saw it, too. “They’re recruiting a totally different type of player than what’s been there before,’’ one opposing coach says. “I think it’s hard to maintain success with the kind of talent they’re accruing. It’s dudes that are hooping, looking for their numbers.”
Always a delicate balance, roster construction has devolved into a tricky mess thanks to the transfer portal. Keeping players happy and creating the perfect chemistry experiment is even harder than it used to be. Tucked in a remote location with a smaller recruiting base, Altman has always added transfers to plug holes and get old – long before the portal came into play. It worked fabulously, especially because it was so unusual. “Honestly, every year I get the roster and half the time, I don’t know half the guys,’’ says one Pac-12 coach. “Lots of transfers, new faces all of the time. But it works for Dana. It always has.’’ Except now everyone can do it, and the competition to land transfers is as heated – if not more so – than finding the best high school prospects.
Oregon has all the advantages that Nike can buy, but as a stand-alone national brand, Oregon basketball doesn’t have the gravitas of the traditional bluebloods, or even the nouveau ones such as Villanova and Gonzaga. The Ducks’ rise in hoops coincided with the heyday of Oregon athletics, the basketball team’s deep NCAA Tournament runs coming on the heels of the football team’s rise under Chip Kelly. Kelly, with his spread offense and daredevil mentality, added substance to the style points of the brash uniforms. Oregon was hip, it was cool and it was good.
But since Kelly left, there has been one BCS Championship appearance and a lot more Holiday Bowls. “I know (the school) likes to think they are still a national brand, but I’m not sure,’’ one head coach says. “Were they ever really with basketball? I never felt like they were that big of a draw, where everyone wanted to go for basketball. They’re not Duke.’’
The league’s inability to get out of its own way hasn’t helped. The Pac-12 Network is a disaster. Even for those who might be interested in following the Oregon brand of basketball, the network schedule doesn’t make it easy to do. And the upcoming defections of USC and UCLA – plus the constant threat to lose Arizona, Arizona State and Colorado – have not done much to buoy up the images of those left behind. That Oregon wasn’t even among the first picks for expansion says a lot about where the school stands in the desirable hierarchy.
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Athletic director Rob Mullens brushes off concern about the Pac-12, arguing that the University of Oregon brand “remains strong,’’ and the Ducks are an “industry leader.’’ Part of that, he believes, comes from Division Street, the school’s collective. For decades, the university’s relationship with Nike – and more proud alum, Nike founder Phil Knight – set it apart from the pack. The cool unis, the swag, Oregon athletes enjoyed perks before the NCAA allowed perks.
Knight helped establish Division Street and the collective has a distinct Nike ring to it. It partnered with GOAT, a sneaker resale platform, on a limited release of Air Jordan VIII, with proceeds going to Oregon athletes, and developed Ducks of a Feather, an athlete-designed clothing brand. But comparatively it is, if not conservative, quiet to other groups that are – reportedly, at least – tossing six figures to lure athletes to campus.
Division Street leadership declined to be interviewed for this story, via a spokesman. But Mullen hears the noise, and understands how it could be perceived as Oregon falling behind. “There’s a lot of misinformation out there, and a lot of the people supplying the chatter are the same ones with ulterior motives,’’ he says. “If our new NCAA president Charlie Baker gets the transparency he wants, we’ll learn pretty quickly what’s legit and what’s not. I know that we, at Oregon, are built with a foundation to sustain us for the long term.’’
Altman has never had trouble attracting players to Oregon. He captured his fair share of top recruiting classes – during the run of five consecutive seasons, the Ducks brought in classes consistently ranked in the top 25. But more critically, he and his staff always have had an eye for players who suit the way Altman wants to play. He needs guys willing to play disruptive defense and commit to the sort of tenacity that it requires. “When we had it going, I like to think that we were known as a team that played hard,’’ Altman says. The Ducks’ deepest dives in the NCAA Tournament, not surprisingly, coincided with years in which their defense ranked high in KenPom – 11th in 2013, when they reached a Sweet 16; 37th in 2016 for an Elite Eight run; 17th in the national semifinal appearance in 2017; 13th for the regional semis in 2019 and 55th two years ago, with another Sweet 16.
The last two years, meanwhile – 53rd and 115th. Oregon’s dip, perhaps not coincidentally, comes at the same time Altman has twice lost his top assistant and recruiter. Tony Stubblefield spent 11 years alongside Altman before being named the head coach at DePaul. Altman tabbed Chris Crutchfield, a former lieutenant under Lon Kruger at Oklahoma, to replace him. Crutchfield took the head-coaching gig at Omaha after one season in Eugene.
The pair – particularly Stubblefield – understood Altman, and recognized the players who could play for the coach, and thereby play at Oregon. Equally important, Stubblefield and Crutchfield both had long-standing relationships that allowed them to get after their players in practice. “What used to be this crazy pillar of stability has become unstable,’’ an assistant coach says. “Now some stranger is coaching these really, really highly ranked guys. Who’s got these meaningful deep-rooted relationships? There’s been a revolving door with the guy that has the best relationship with these kids.”
In their stead is not only a roster that lacks Altman’s desired intensity but doesn’t mesh together, or with the coach. “For Dana, he’s just got to get some staff continuity,” an assistant says. “I think it starts there. He’s got to get back to having guys that know Oregon. That know Dana first and foremost and know what kinds of guys worked well for Dana.”
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The program and its coach have navigated ebb currents in the not-too-distant past. The Ducks didn’t appear in the final Associated Press poll of both 2014 and 2015 and then finished in the top 10 two straight years following that. Oregon likewise was nowhere to be found in the final AP rankings of 2018 and 2019; it landed at No. 13 in 2020 and made a Sweet 16 in 2021. It’s the sort of cycle that both suggests a program is, in fact, pretty good but not perhaps nationally elite, while also capable of performing at an elite level under the right circumstances. “Dana always has had the ability to put together a roster,” Mullens says. “How many times have people had questions about Oregon in October, November and then said in March, ‘Wow. How’d they get here?’ In an environment full of constant change, we definitely have the right person to pull the pieces together.”
So if history suggests it’s overcooking things to label the coming winter as declarative about both the future of Oregon and the Altman era, it’s nevertheless fair to view it as an inflection point. Richardson is gone, and so are the arguments about whether he was ultimately miscast as a point guard after Bob Cousy Award winner Payton Pritchard’s departure, and whether the coaching staff was too betrothed to Richardson in that role for its own good. The incoming recruiting class is ranked No. 6 nationally per 247 Sports’ composite, featuring three top 30 freshmen: power forward Kwame Evans Jr., point guard Jackson Shelstad and small forward Mookie Cook. Shelstad, in particular, may be the solution to at least one core issue; one college coach who scouted the five-star prospect from West Linn, Ore., suggests he’s the natural floor general the program has lacked since Pritchard left Eugene.
Then there are the requisite transfers: Kario Oquendo, a guard who averaged 14 points per game in two seasons with Georgia, and guard Jesse Zarzuela, who averaged 16.3 points at Central Michigan last season but who also will be playing for his sixth program in six seasons, covering stops at the Division I and junior college levels. Neither is necessarily a star; it’s more consequential that they become useful and productive rotation performers who can exist in harmony with the ballyhooed freshmen.
This is, really, the telltale dynamic. If Altman and his staff have miscalculated on this haul’s willingness to work and be coached and manage individual agendas, then some truly hard questions might bubble up.
The relatively bad times have come and gone before at Oregon. That’s the upshot. It also doesn’t promise anything about them going anywhere this time, with upheaval all around the neighborhood.
Even the vanilla guy at the top recognizes as much. “I feel good about where we are and what we can do,” Altman says. “But then again, I felt like that the last two years, too.”
(Illustration: Eamonn Dalton / The Athletic; photos: Ethan Miller, Katharine Lotze / Getty Images)
