Tag: Dana Altman

2023 5-star point guard Kylan Boswell includes Oregon Ducks in Top-8

Dana Altman doesn’t want to be left out of the Ducks’ recruiting buzz. The nation’s No. 11 player in 2023, Kylan Boswell, recently listed the Ducks in his Top-8.

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In the world of the Oregon Ducks, a lot of our attention stays on the football team, and lately, it’s been focused on the recruiting aspect of the sport. Every now and again, though, Dana Altman will give us a proverbial nudge and tell you that he is among the nation’s best at recruiting, as well.

On Tuesday, one of the top players in the 2023 recruiting class, 5-star point guard Kylan Boswell, announced his Top-8, including the Ducks in the mix. The Compass Prep player is listed as the No. 3 PG in the nation, and the No. 11 player overall, according to 247 Sports. 

The other 7 schools Boswell is considering are Texas Tech, UNLV, Arizona, Michigan, USC, Kansas, and Illinois.

The Ducks have already gotten a jump on the 2023 recruiting class, securing a verbal commitment from Jackson Shelstad, a 4-star guard out of West Linn, Oregon. Shelstad is the No. 1 ranked player in the state of Oregon, and No. 67 in the nation.

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Will Richardson named Pac-12 Player of the Week after career-high vs. Utah

Will Richardson scored 23 of his career-high 26 points in the second half of Oregon’s win over Utah, earning him weekly Pac-12 honors.

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After a slow and at times frustrating start to the Oregon Ducks 2021 basketball season, things are starting to look like they’re clicking into gear.

For the Ducks’ leader, Will Richardson, that certainly is the case.

On Monday, Richardson was named the Pac-12 Player of the week, just a couple of days after scoring a career-high 26 points in the win over the Utah Utes on Saturday night.

Richardson, who was a preseason all-conference first-team selection, hit 5-of-6 three-pointers against the Utes and scored 23 of his 26 points in the second half.

Richardson is now averaging 13.6 points per game this season and has scored in the 20s twice this year, both of which were wins for the Ducks.

This is the first weekly honor of Richardson’s career, and the first by a Ducks player since Chris Duarte set the UO school record with his fourth player of the week selection on Mar. 8, 2021.

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How it Happened: Oregon Ducks pick up first conference win with 79-66 defeat over Utah

The Ducks started the new year on the right foot with a 79-66 win over Utah, picking up their first Pac-12 victory of the season.

The Oregon Ducks got off to a slow start to the new year, but a rally in the first half allowed them to come back and utilize a strong second half against the Utah Utes, eventually picking up their first conference victory of the year, 79-66.

Oregon looked to be showing some rust early on after not having played a game since December 21st, but they eventually shook that off and were able to ride a hot hand from Jacob Young in the second half and beat the Utes. While the season didn’t start how Oregon had hoped, the Ducks seem to be getting some things figured out as they get into the meat of their conference schedule.

Quick Hits: Oregon Ducks finish non-conference schedule with 68-59 win over Pepperdine

The Ducks enter the holiday break on a semi-high note with a 68-59 win over Pepperdine, though the victory wasn’t very pretty.

The Oregon Ducks finished their non-conference schedule with a 68-59 win over Pepperdine and will now enter a short holiday break on a semi-high note following the victory.

Of course, it could have been a lot prettier, and head coach Dana Altman will certainly have a lot to say about the performance. The Ducks were lackadaisical early on, and struggle to put away a team that many would consider beneath them when it comes to talent on the floor.

Nonetheless, a win is a win, and those have been hard to come by for the Ducks so far this year. Here are a few quick notes from the victory on Tuesday:

Quick hits: Ducks let upset slip away with a poor second half

Oregon put a scare into undefeated Baylor for a half, but it wasn’t nearly enough to pull off the upset.

Playing great for 20 minutes against the No. 1 team in the nation isn’t nearly enough if you want to shock the world.

Oregon played the game of the season for a half, but the real Baylor Bears came out of the locker room with a purpose and outscored the Ducks 43-31 in the second half.

What resulted was a 78-70 win for Baylor, which improved to 10-0 on the season. Oregon fell to 6-6 as the Ducks go back to the drawing board once again.

The difference between the first half and the second half was definitely the energy level. Baylor was seemingly getting every rebound ad every loose ball in the last 20 minutes of the contest.

Baylor also made shots, something the Bears had trouble with for the first half. The Ducks also turned the ball over way too many times with 16 miscues.

‘We’re not getting better:’ Dana Altman is brutally honest about Oregon Ducks basketball

The Ducks aren’t a quick fix away from turning this around, and Altman was brutally honest about that on Wednesday.

Coming into the Oregon Ducks 2021-22 men’s basketball season, there were some extremely high expectations. A lot of new pieces were on the roster, but with Dana Altman at the helm, and veteran guard Will Richardson returning, a top-15 ranking and projections deep into the NCAA Tournament were not outlandish.

A month into the season, the results have subverted those expectations by a large margin. Oregon is currently 5-4 with blowout losses to BYU, Saint Mary’s, and Houston. Their fourth defeat, a close 69-67 OT game against Arizona State, came against one of the worst teams in the Pac-12 conference. This is certainly not the product that we expected to see on the floor at Matthew Knight Arena.

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We knew it would take a little bit of time for Altman to assemble this Rubix Cube and get the team playing winning basketball, but nobody expected the lows to be this far down in the basement.

“We’re making fundamental mistakes that should not be made on December 8th. Maybe on November 9th when we play our first game,” Altman said in a press conference on Wednesday. “We’re not getting better.”

One of the main problems for the Ducks is that their star players are not playing like stars at the moment. Richardson, who has been among the team’s leading scorers over the past couple of seasons, is often struggling to find the bottom of the net.

The several talented transfers to come to Eugene aren’t doing much better. So far, both Jacob Young (9.7 ppg) and De’Vion Harmon (8.7 ppg) are struggling to have the impact that we projected, and Quincy Guerrier (6.2 ppg, 4.8 rpg) is playing way below his ceiling that we saw at Syracuse. All of this has led to a sort of malaise settling over the team in the month of December.

“Everybody’s a little down,” Altman said. “As competitors, you know you’ve underperformed, and that bothers you. So you’ve got to fight you, got to compete. And I told them it’s not going to be easy to get it back. It’s not like turning on the light switch fellas. We’re going to have to battle our tails off to get it back, and you’re going to have to show great resolve to get it done. And I’d like to say I still believe they will, but it is not going to be easy.”

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Throughout the season, the Ducks have shown more than a few bright spots, including a blazing start to the year where they had big wins over Texas Southern and SMU. They were also able to blow out Montana and dispatch with UC Riverside. The highs have been impressive, but the lows have been tough to watch. We know from watching that the talent is there to be a really good team, but the consistency is what’s lacking.

“Do I think we can turn this around quickly? Probably not,” Altman said. “You know this is something we’re going to have to do every day in practice and for a long time to be a consistent team. Can we have some bright moments? Yea, but we’re going to have some moments because we just don’t have the habits necessary to have that consistency. And that’s been proven in games, it’s just not my opinion. That’s been proven.”

Coming up, Oregon is going to have some tough tests on the schedule. They travel to Stanford on Sunday and then host Portland on Tuesday — two games that are extremely winnable should they play to their potential. On Friday, though, the No. 2 Baylor Bears come to town for an early-season clash. Before the season started, this looked to be arguably the premier game of the year; now it might seem like a better idea to watch with your eyes partially covered.

The Ducks may come out and surprise us, giving Baylor a test deep in the woods. They certainly have the talent to play with some of the top teams in the country, but a lack of consistency has us questioning which team is going to show up on any given night. Will it be the sharp-shooting unit that downed a future tournament team in SMU? Or the inept offensive squad who failed to score 20 points in the first half during three of four games last month?

That’s certainly the million-dollar question for Dana Altman, and after talking to him on Wednesday, he obviously isn’t shy to give you an honest answer.

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Quick Hits: Oregon Ducks stand strong in 71-65 win over UC Riverside

The Ducks picked up a hard-fought win over UC Riverside thanks to stellar games from Will Richardson and N’Faly Dante.

The start of the game made it seem like the Oregon Ducks were going to shoot UC Riverside out of the building. However, the rest of the contest didn’t quite play out that way.

Oregon came out with a hard-fought 71-65 win over RIverside, and they had to battle down to the final minutes for the victory. After both teams shot the ligths out early on, they cooled off in the second half and were forced to let the defenses take over. Fortunately, the Ducks stood tall and were able to come out with the victory, thanks in large part to some stellar play from Will Richardson and N’Faly Dante.

Here are some quick hitters to know after the game:

Quick Hitters: Oregon Ducks get back on the right track with 87-47 win over Montana

The Ducks got a much-needed blowout victory over the Montana Grizzlies on Monday night.

After the last few games for the Oregon Ducks, this was surely a sight for sore eyes.

The Ducks had dropped 3 of their past 4 games before this one, dating back to the BYU blowout in the Phil Knight Invitational. In all three losses, they failed to score over 20 points in the first half.

So when they surpassed the 20-point mark before the first half even reached the 10-minute mark on Monday, it deserved recognition.

The offense was flowing, the shots were falling, and players in large part looked to be having fun on the court. They weren’t thinking, but they were simply playing basketball. With a few big games on the schedule coming up, including a home-stand against a top-10 ranked Baylor team on December 18th, it will be important for Oregon to get back on the right track.

Here are a couple of quick-hit stats to know after the game:

Even Dana Altman is surprised by the Ducks’ regression in the past few games

A couple early-season triumphs threw us off the scent for how far this team still has to go before we can consider them Pac-12 favorites.

Two games into the season, the Oregon Ducks men’s basketball team was flying high, and worries about Dana Altman piecing together a roster full of new players did not seem to be much of a concern. The Ducks dispatched with both Texas Southern and SMU with ease, and they played as a cohesive unit that was highly talented on offense and committed on defense.

Ever since those two games, though, that team seems to have gone missing.

The Ducks are coming off of a few abysmal losses, with three of their past four games ending in defeats of 20-points or more. Two of those games, against Houston and BYU, were decided by more than 30 points. Something is not right, and we’re not sure what went wrong.

“We have a long way to go,” Altman said after Wednesday’s loss to Houston in the third-place game at the Maui Invitational. “How we’ve regressed so far in two weeks just shocks me.”

Since their first two games of the season, the Ducks are 1-3, averaging just 55 points per game. That average is also inflated a bit by a blowout win over Chaminade where Oregon scored 73 points. If you were to take that away, the Ducks are averaging 49 points per game.

A lot of the Duck’s problems seem to stem from the offensive side of the ball. They’ve been largely unable to find the bottom of the net in this recent stretch, where the team is shooting just 36.2% from the field in the last three losses.

Is it time to panic for Duck fans?

Not quite yet, would be my advice. We knew coming into this season that with so many new pieces, it was going to take some time for Altman to fit everyone together and have the squad working on the same page. A couple of early-season triumphs might have thrown us off the scent for how far this team still has to go before we can consider them Pac-12 favorites. It’s clear now that they are absolutely a work in progress.

There’s a lot of progress left to be made, as well.

If Oregon still looks this inept a month from now, you can start thinking about hitting that panic button. For now, let’s try to keep a level head, though. There’s a lot of basketball yet to be played.

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No, you shouldn’t be worried about Dana Altman and the No. 12 Oregon Ducks

Oregon’s historic loss to BYU was certainly surprising on Tuesday night, but it absolutely shouldn’t raise concerns about Dana Altman and the Ducks.

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The Oregon Ducks certainly didn’t look like the No. 12 team in the nation on Tuesday night in their 81-49 loss to the BYU Cougars.

Far from it.

However, anyone who knows Dana Altman and the Oregon basketball program should have expected this. That’s not to say that they should have expected a 32-point defeat to an unranked team, but they should have expected an outcome early in the season that makes you scratch your head.

Did we think it would be this bad? No, but in the end, it doesn’t matter.

The Ducks are a team that has a roster in flux and is working to find rotations that work. Their team features 4 transfers who are getting significant minutes, a pair of freshmen that are in the rotation, and a pair of big men who missed the majority of last season with injuries. To expect them to be in mid-season form three games into the year is a bit over-zealous.

“I still believe we have good talent, that we’re a good team but we got it handed to us tonight,” head coach Dana Altman said. “That’s on me. I’m disappointed in those guys but not nearly as disappointed as I am in myself and I sincerely mean that.”

The fact is that this Oregon team is no different than teams of the past. As a utilization of the transfer portal has become more pertinent for Altman, fans have gotten used to the team needing some time to get things going. By the time spring rolls around, we can expect the Ducks to be humming along, likely hitting their stride right before the tournament.

We’ve seen the talent on this roster, and through the first two games of the season, it seemed like they might have skipped the chemistry-building stage of things and jumped right into the thick of it. Regression came on Tuesday, and all of us should rightfully take a step back.

That’s not a slight to Oregon, or Altman, or anyone on the team. It’s just a simple statement of fact that will hopefully reset our bearings and calibrate our expectations going forward.

This isn’t a team that will likely go 29-3 this season. You probably won’t find them with a top-5 ranking going into March with a No. 1 or No. 2 next to their name on the bracket. They will, however, likely have a good chance at winning the Pac-12 Championship, and will hopefully be hitting their stride and clicking on all cylinders a couple of months down the road, with a real chance to make some noise in the tournament.

It’s going to take some time to get there, but we can trust in Dana Altman’s track record, knowing that the time will eventually come. There will undoubtedly be some stinkers along the way, and while Tuesday night’s loss to BYU was stinkier than most, it was necessary for the growth of this team.

They’ll learn from it and get better.

The Rubix Cube is in its early stages of being solved. Let’s allow Altman to keep at it before we start to worry.

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