Dana Altman analyzes N'Faly Dante's offensive contributions

Oregon big man N’Faly Dante has been playing like one of the most dominant centers in college basketball this season. His dominant play has attracted the attention of opposing coaches, who frequently blanket him with double teams. Despite that, he’s still been able to perform at an extremely high level. Earlier this week against UC Riverside, he dumped in 14 points on 5 of 10 shooting from the field. Following Oregon’s 71-65 victory over the Highlanders, Ducks’ head coach Dana Altman praised Dante’s offensive performance in his postgame press conference.

“Well, I thought that he did a really good job. Just looking here. He had one turnover, which was that travel. I thought he got bumped pretty good on that. So, I thought he fought the double teams really good. One turnover. I thought he fought it pretty good, for as much attention as he got,” Altman said.

“I think that’s as poor as he shot it from the field, 5 for 10. You know, we usually see him [shoot] 60, 70 percent. But, no, I thought he did a good job. I thought he did a good job,” Altman said.

Dante is one of the more skilled big men in the country and he’s got the stats to prove it. He’s been averaging 13.4 points, 6.0 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.4 blocks, while shooting 60.4% from the field. The 6-foot-11, 230-pounder from Mali continues to show off his extremely versatile skill set. In the 2020-2021 season, Dante averaged 8.2 points and 5.2 rebounds per game in six contests, before suffering a non-contact left knee injury (torn ACL) during the San Francisco game on Dec. 17. The injury forced him to miss the rest of the 2020-2021 season.

Not surprisingly, Dante was one of the most highly touted centers in America coming out of prestigious Sunrise Christian Academy (Wichita, Kansas). He reclassified from the 2020 class to the 2019 class. According to the On3 Consensus Rankings for the 2019 cycle, Dante was rated as the No. 26 overall prospect in America. He helped to lead Sunrise Christian to the quarterfinals of the Geico Nationals in 2019. Dante also averaged 16.5 points per game, while shooting 85.2 percent from the floor on the Nike EYBL circuit.