Dana Altman shares injury recovery timelines for N'Faly Dante, freshman Mookie Cook

On3’s Jarrid Denney had some injury news to report on Thursday for the Oregon basketball team, who is roughly a month away from the start of their 2023-24 season.

Denney tweeted out the latest on star player and starting center N’Faly Dante as well as freshman Mookie Cook. Here was that tweet: “Dana Altman said Oregon freshman forward Mookie Cook will likely be out until mid-November due to an ankle injury. He hasn’t practiced yet this fall.”

As for Dante, Altman confirmed the big man is set to rejoin practice “in a week or so” after some sort of injury has sidelined him for a portion of practice this summer. But he did not say what that setback is.

The same is true for another blue-chip freshman, KJ Evans, who Altman says “has been in and out of practice so far this year.”

That’s good news on Dante and a bummer on rookies Cook and Evans. Jon Rothstein had previously reported that Cook would not be ready for the start of practice, and this new update claims he’ll be out for the start of the season, but should still hopefully get back on the court early in non-conference play.

Oregon certainly needs N’Faly Dante to get back healthy, as he was the team’s leading scorer and rebounder last year at 13.4 points and 8.4 rebounds per game, which helped earn him All-Pac-12 honors for the 2023 season. He’s set to have a huge senior year with the Ducks.

In regard to the freshmen, KJ Evans — or Kwame Evans Jr. — is a Baltimore native who came out of high school as a four-star prospect and was rated the No. 16 overall player and No. 2 overall power forward in the 2023 recruiting class by the On3 Industry Rankings. Meanwhile, Cook is originally from Jefferson, Oregon and was ranked No. 33 overall as a four-star small forward.

With those two blue-chippers plus another in four-star point guard and No. 26 overall recruit Jackson Shelstad, Dana Altman finished with perhaps his best overall recruiting class, as it ranked No. 3 in the country behind the usual and immense hauls that Kentucky and Duke both brought in.

Ideally, all three of those rookies will get to see plenty of action in the non-conference slate, even if Evans and Cook are a bit banged up to start the year.