Dana Altman Hot Seat Watch

11/20/2023

I love Dana Altman. A cornerstone of the Oregon athletic department and a rightfully glorified figure in a turbulent men's basketball program, Dana Altman has brought his program to consistent heights not seen in Eugene since 1939. In recent years though, the consistent teams and style of play has faded from Altman despite great recruiting success and an incredibly ripe NIL situation. Oregon basketball fans are starting to at least question the temperature on the seat of Altman as he's failed to lead the Ducks back to the tournament since 2021, the last seasons have been filled with streaky injury riddled teams that seem to share a lot of common issues that have plagued the program in this current downtrend. This is alarmist and I know that but following the trends and similarities between the start of this season as well as the last few I am just preparing to have the conversation that no one wants to have. Does Dana still have it?

• Inconsistent/stalling offense

• Poor field FT and 3pt percentages 

• Bad defensive cohesiveness

The last two seasons for the Oregon basketball program have been ugly and gut wrenching to watch. Facing several key injuries that never seemed to allow for any consistency in the rotation, Altman tried to build through the season.  This is one of the biggest factors in this slide for the Ducks but is not the only thing impacting this struggling team. Lack of any kind of respectable 3 point shooting has left Oregon to become unthreatening offensively and unable to keep up with the top teams in the Pac12. This hasn’t led to a complete destruction of the program because of Altman's ability to bring great frontcourt talent in the last 5 seasons, with players like N’faly Dante, Franck Kepnang, Francis Okoro, Nate Bittle, Chandler Lawson Ke’el Ware. This has come with a tax at the freethrow line for the Ducks. The Ducks season FT% has dropped 4 of the last 5 seasons and has not been above 71% since 2017-18. Last season was the most frustrating as several times down the stretch of the season in January and February, when Altman is most known for getting his teams together, lost games from leaving so many points at the freethrow line. When that is matched with no true number 1 scorer and no true 3 point threat, you lose games you shouldn’t and let a season slip away. 

This season already we have seen starting center N’faly Dante sidelined most of the season, as well as 5 star freshman Jackson Shelsted and 5 star freshman Mookie Cook both yet to even sniff the court due to injuries. Altman already has a streaky past with playing freshman no matter how touted they are as seen with players like Bol Bol, Nate Bittle, and Ke’el Ware know all too well, but time and time again we see the longer you play in the Altman system the better you are able to effectively run it making it hard for freshmen to pick up his complicated hybrid defense and his patient off ball movement offense. It is not conducive to learning as you go no matter how talented you are, as shown in the past as Altman's best teams are based around experienced upperclassmen who have stayed in the program for multiple years. The 2017 Final 4 team was centered around upperclassmen like Jordan Bell, Dillion Brooks, and Chris Boucher. The 2020/2021 teams that kinda get lumped together due to covid cancellations were held together by Payton Pritchard, Chris Duarte, and Will Richardson. The success of these teams were their abilities to shut down teams defensively in the second half of games and find success with younger additions to the teams in smaller roles where their talent could be used in bursts to provide added depth. 2017 saw the emergence of freshmen Payton Pritchard become the point guard to facilitate between scorers previously mentioned and become an added talent late in the season. Success in the 2020 was then boosted by added depth from younger talent like Chandler Lawson and Shakur Juiston and talented veteran threats like Anthony Mathis and Will Richardson. Altman right now just does not have that same build that makes his team's successful come February, and taking pieces away that need to be developed quickly is not an encouraging start, and with NIL and seemingly no freshman wanting to stay for more than a year this recruiting success Altman has had almost have a negative impact on his style of play through a season. Altman needs time to mold his teams and players to pick up his system and run cohesively as a unit in order to get elite 8 type of success and college basketball has evolved recently past that.

 I write this to say that this season may not look pretty for the Ducks and it may continue to see similar woes to the last few seasons that caused losses in streaky games late in the season. Dana Altman is not a bad coach and has brought respect to the Tall Firs of Oregon in his tenure, but it is time to adapt his style of play or adapt his recruiting strategy because those two factors are starting to really oppose each other and hinder this program.