So who’s the best college basketball coach at successfully flipping a team with new players from one season to the next?
Kentucky’s John Calipari and Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski are two names that come to mind. After all, Coach Cal and Coach K are the only two coaches who have won national championships with “one and done” freshmen. Well, after tuning into the first week of the college basketball season, I’m adding Oregon’s Dana Altman to the “best flipper” list and also making a case for him as one of the nation’s most underrated coaches. Calipari and Krzyzewski are already Hall of Famers and Altman will get there one day, too. Before arriving at Oregon, Altman had a great 16-year run at Creighton, and his 648-339 career record places him among college basketball’s winningest active coaches.
Altman has built Oregon into an elite program, and with eight new players on the roster, the 14th ranked Ducks are off to a 3-0 start. Oregon remained unbeaten, with an impressive 82-74 win over No. 13 Memphis on Tuesday night. The Tigers came into the game with the nation’s top recruiting class, nearly all true freshmen, including ESPN’s No. 1 prospect, 7-1 center James Wiseman. Meanwhile, Oregon’s recruiting class, a mix of ultra-experienced transfers and true freshmen, was rated fourth. In this early season Top 20 clash, experience won out, as one might expect.
In his 10 seasons at Oregon, Altman has been faced with the daunting challenge of rebuilding with seven or more newcomers six different times. Not exactly the easiest path to success, but with Altman’s uncanny ability to put a team together on the run, the Ducks have made the NCAA’s six times and advanced to the Sweet 16, three of the past four seasons. While Coach Cal and Coach K have won NCAA titles with “one and done” freshmen, in recent years, Altman has gone a different route and shrewdly recruited a mix of transfers and true freshmen. Among the six newcomers in Oregon’s nine-man rotation, three are transfers and three are true freshmen.
Two of Oregon’s transfers are fifth-year seniors, 6-4 shooting guard Anthony Mathis (the all-time leader in 3’s at New Mexico) and 6-7 Shakur Juiston (an All-Mountain West selection at UNLV), and both have performed like seasoned vets. Mathis is the team’s second-leading scorer, averaging 17 points, and has made 13-of-18 from the arc for a sizzling 72 percent, while Juiston is averaging 12.7 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 4.3 assists. The Ducks’ other transfer, 6-6 wing Chris Duarte, has been impressive as well, averaging 10 points. Duarte, the national JUCO player of the year, left the Memphis game after injuring his knee late in the first half. After being carried off the floor with no weight being placed on his right knee, it surely was a relief to Duck fans when Duarte returned to start the second half.
Despite other offers from Auburn and Michigan, Mathis’ arrival at Oregon was hardly a surprise. He was a high school teammate of Oregon’s star senior point guard, Payton Pritchard, where the two helped lead West Linn High School to three consecutive state titles. Pritchard became a starter for Oregon as a freshman on a Final Four team, and while he’s enjoying the reunion with the older Mathis, he’s still the Ducks’ team leader. With Oregon leading Memphis 74-69 with 1:40 remaining, there was little doubt who Altman was going to when he called a timeout. Often, simplicity is the smartest way to go when making a coaching decision in a pressure situation, and who could argue with Altman’s strategy when he moved three of his players to one side for backside rebounding and placed the other in the ball-side corner, so Pritchard had the space to create his own shot and bury a dagger 3 from up top.
There’s been plenty of buzz surrounding Michigan State’s Cassius Winston, entering his senior season, and he is a great player, but Pritchard (with a similar style to Winston’s) isn’t far behind and might just be the next best point guard in the country. Averaging a team high 19 points, 5.9 assists and 5.7 rebounds, the 6-2 Pritchard fills a stat line with the best at his position.
Finally, let’s not forget about the Ducks’ three highly-rated freshmen, 6-8 C.J. Walker, 6-8 Chandler Lawson (brother of Kansas’ Dedric, one of my favorite players last season) and 6-6 Addison Patterson. All three were scoreless in Oregon’s opening night win over Fresno State, so it had to be re-assuring for Altman when Patterson and Lawson made solid contributions in the Memphis victory, with 15 points combined. Another young Duck, 6-5 sophomore guard Will Richardson, also turned in a strong performance against the Tigers, with 10 points and 6 assists. Oregon is still waiting to see if 6-11 N’Faly Dante, a Five Star recruit, becomes eligible second semester. Oregon lacks size up front, with Juiston and 6-9 sophomore Francis Okoro (a good role player) getting most of the minutes, so Dante would provide the Ducks a rim protector they lack.
After watching all three of Oregon’s games so far, I’m wondering if there’s any team in the country which plays a better match-up zone? I doubt there would be any dispute from last year’s eventual national champion Virginia. In the Sweet 16, the Wahoos looked completely out of synch offensively, facing Oregon’s 1-2-2 full-court press back to 2-3 match-up zone, and barely escaped with a 53-49 victory. And let’s not forget the job Altman did last season turning the Ducks around and winning 10 in a row to get them to the Sweet 16. With March Madness just days away, Oregon was 15-12 and struggling after losing Bol Bol, the top-rated recruit in program history, to a foot injury earlier in the season. The Ducks won their final four regular-season games and rolled through the Pac 12 Conference Tournament, punctuated with a 20 point victory over regular-season champ Washington, before beating Wisconsin and Cal-Irvine handily in the NCAA’s. Down the stretch, Oregon was dominant defensively, as the Ducks allowed only 54 points to both Wisconsin and Cal-Irvine before shutting down Virginia.
Now, a season later, the Ducks no longer look like a college student cramming at finals time to make the NCAA’s. Despite playing so many newcomers, Oregon has played well on the defensive end and has excellent size to play zone, with all nine rotation players ranging from 6-2 to 6-9. The Ducks are opportunistic, looking for steals in their full-court press. But, their main purpose is to shorten the shot clock and force opponents to face their tricky 2-3 match-up zone with limited time. Designed to place more defenders in help side position than man-to-man defense, the Ducks’ match-up zone has been sealing off the inside (they even double team the post) and forcing opponents to shoot contested 3-pointers. Oregon has been smothering the arc, no easy task when playing zone, and limiting opponents to 23 percent shooting. Aided by Mathis’ hot start, the Ducks are making 42 percent of their 3’s for a big advantage from the arc. With the 3-point line moved back nearly a foot and a half with the new NCAA rules this season, Oregon’s match-up zone should be even better, especially in March Madness when shooting with added pressure becomes more challenging. The Ducks’ best shooter, Mathis, on the other hand, looks like he has the shooting range to compensate for the added distance, evidenced by his early-season hot start.
All things considered, there’s plenty to like about Altman’s newly built Ducks. This is why I was puzzled after listening to ESPN’s Seth Greenberg talk about Oregon at halftime of Sunday’s Florida’s State’s-Florida game. “Arguably an NCAA team tournament team that can win a game (in the NCAA’s),” noted Greenberg, apparently not aware that Oregon is the pre-season No. 1 in a much improved Pac 12. I’ve disagreed with many of Greenberg’s past assessments, so what else is new? I know it’s a little early, but I’m predicting that the Oregon footballers won’t be the only Duck team contending for national honors this season.