Dana Altman provides spirited defense of Will Richardson, sheds light on health status of Ducks' star guard
It isn’t often that Dana Altman gets fired up during a postgame press conference.
On Saturday, though, Oregon’s even-keeled coach gave a lengthy, spirited defense of Ducks’ star guard Will Richardson following his team’s season-ending loss at Texas A&M.
Richardson missed his fifth straight game for the Ducks Saturday. Until now, the school had only announced that Richardson had a non-COVID-19 related illness. But while speaking with reporters via Zoom, Altman revealed the details behind the senior guard’s absence.
“In this era of social media, everybody wanting to know everything and know everybody’s business. Some people told me there was a lot of stuff, rumors — Will’s finally allowed me to tell,” Altman said. “He’s got mono. He’s had mono, he started feeling poorly maybe as early as the (Feb. 17-19) Arizona trip. He didn’t want me to say anything, so I didn’t.
“But I talked to him last week and I just said, ‘Will, I’ve heard people saying it’s stress, you’ve left the team.’ He just wanted to be left alone. If you know Will, he’s quiet, he’s reserved. He just didn’t want everybody knowing his business.”
Richardson is Oregon’s leading scorer at 14.1 points per game and one of the top three-point shooters in the Pac-12 at 38.8 percent. Without him, Oregon badly struggled to shoot from long range over its final five games of the season and shot just 32.3 percent as a team from downtown.
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“You always wonder, but you play with the guys that you have,” Altman said when asked if Richardson would have made a massive difference for the Ducks in the final weeks of the season. “I go back to Chris Boucher tearing his ACL and Bol Bol hurting his foot and different injuries we’ve had to key guys. Could we have done something else? Could we have finished better because of it? Those are always questions in the back of your mind, but that’s part of the game.”
Altman did not provide a concrete answer as to what the future holds for Richardson. He reiterated that Richardson is “fine” and is currently in Eugene recovering.
“I want Will to be happy,” Altman said. “If Will wants to come back, great. If he wants to go try to make it in the pros, great. If he wants to go somewhere else, great. I want Will to be happy, just like I do all our players.
“Because I know if they’re not all-in at Oregon, we’re not gonna accomplish what we wanna accomplish. I loved working with Will for four years, and I hope he comes back. I hope he comes back and gets in that weight room and works on his game and is the player I know he is. Because he’s a heck of a basketball player.”
