Dana Altman offers strong takeaways from scrimmage with Nevada

Oregon has won 20 or more games every year of Dana Altman’s head coaching tenure. He led the Ducks to an Elite Eight appearance in 2015-16 and a Final Four appearance in 2016-17. Since, they’ve made it back to the Sweet 16 twice (2019 and 2021).

Oregon is coming off a 24-12 campaign, during which it finished fourth in the Pac-12 and made the Round of 32 in the NCAA Tournament.

Altman knows a thing or two about having his teams ready to play their best basketball in March. He’s also fully aware of that process, and where it starts every year.

“I don’t expect it to be good in November, but I expect it to get better every week, and I expect it to be a lot better in December and January and February if we’re going to have a good ball team,” Altman said Thursday.

Even so, Altman didn’t mince words when asked about this year’s squad’s performance in a recent scrimmage against Nevada.

“We didn’t rebound very well,” Altman said. “This is a team that’s got to change a little bit of their mentality. They all want to score, they all want to shoot the three, and we got to get them to guard and rebound a lot more than what we’ve been doing.

“We’ve been a work-in-progress since June 26 when we brought them into summer school. They all have a tremendous amount of confidence in their offensive ability, and I want them to be aggressive, but night in, night out, and I explained to them, OK, we were struggling a little bit [last season] — we finally got our zone straightened out, and we hold all those teams in the 60s.”

Between Dec. 28 and March 7 last season, a 19-game span in which the Ducks went 11-8, they allowed an average of 73.9 points per contest.

Then, over its final six games of the year, Oregon conceded just 69.5 points per game. In the process, it won five straight matchups before suffering a double-overtime loss to Creighton, just barely missing out on the Sweet 16.

“I mean, it wasn’t like we were scoring all the time,” Altman said. “I mean, we had some good offensive outbursts at times, but defensively we just finally limited some possessions and started rebounding the ball better, and our zone, we got connected defensively.

“You’re not going to shoot the ball well every night. If you’re going to have a consistent team, and one that has a chance to be playing late in season, you better guard, and you better rebound. And I didn’t make up the statement, but offense sells tickets, and guys will have fun with it, but you better guard to win a few games and you better rebound to win even more.”

The Ducks added a handful of transfers this offseason: guards Ra’Heim Moss (Toledo) and TJ Bamba (Villanova, and Washington State before that) and forwards Supreme Cook (Georgetown, and Fairfield before that) and Brandon Angel (Stanford). All four of them are upperclassmen with four-star transfer portal prospect ratings, according to the On3 Industry Ranking.

Oregon also returned a few key contributors from last year’s squad such as sophomore guard Jackson Shelstad and redshirt senior guard Jadrian Tracey. Shelstad was third on the team with 12.8 points per game in 2023-24. Both Shelstad and Tracey made at least 37 3-pointers last year.

The Ducks will kick off the 2024-25 campaign Monday against UC Riverside.

“We got to make the right play offensively,” Altman said. “We’re taking some questionable shots. Guys got to make the right basketball play. … So shot selection, execution of the offense is important. Defensively, just possession after possession being engaged.

“We can’t take possessions off, and then the rebounding. Everybody rebounding. But we got to get more connected as a team, offensively and defensively, and that’s not unexpected at this time of year, but, again, it’s got to get better every week, and definitely better every month if we want to have a ball team.”