Dana Altman Addresses Team's Mentality Amid Disappointing Start

It's often said that Dana Altman aligns Rubik's Cubes. In essence, he can take something complicated and craft something beautiful out of it.

Well, the Rubik's Cube that now sits in front of him is about 10 feet tall and features about 30 different colors.

In his previous 11 years at Oregon Altman has taken teams to the Sweet 16 and beyond that many people thought had no business being anywhere near that type of success. Just a couple years ago in 2018-19, he led a team that was 15-12 and 6-8 in conference play in late February to a Pac-12 Tournament title and the Sweet 16.

The 2021-22 Ducks, however, are a whole different fiasco. It was expected that they wouldn't be elite out of the gate — after all, Chris Duarte, Eugene Omoruyi and LJ Figueroa were all moving on from the program and a wave of transfers and freshmen were on their way to Eugene.

But the Ducks just don't look like a Dana Altman team, and he addressed their tough start with reporters Wednesday.

"We should have a much better basketball team than we do, and our guys know that," Altman said. "But we are just not putting it together. There's a disconnect. Players aren't connected with each other. They're not connected with our coaching staff. We put ourselves in a bad situation here."

The Ducks are 5-4 to start the year, with a 4-1 record at Matthew Knight Arena and a brutal 1-3 record away from home where they've been outscored by 73 points in their losses. They're coming off of an excruciating overtime loss to an Arizona State team that has had its worst start in decades.

In that game, Oregon was 13-21 from the free throw line and 4-22 from three, including 12 uncontested threes that were missed. In a game that came down to every possession, Altman was unhappy with the free-throw shooting and the defensive execution.

"We had so many opportunities on the defensive end to win that game, and we just didn't put stops together," he said. "And that's probably what I'm most disappointed in. You're gonna have bad shooting nights. You hope to control the free throws a little bit better than we did on a night where you really needed every one of them, but the thing I was most disappointed in was just our awareness defensively."

Late in the game, Arizona State knocked down numerous open three-pointers to take control of the game and silence the raucous Pit Crew. Part of the struggle defensively came from Eric Williams Jr. missing the game due to an injury.

"Eric didn't practice," Altman said. "I'll let you know on Eric's progress there, but he didn't practice yesterday."

The Ducks were also without reserve Lök Wur, who has a foot injury.

"Lök's probably out for a while," Altman told reporters. "He had a boot on and he had the boot on yesterday at practice. So he's probably out for a while."

With those returners missing, the Ducks have badly needed their transfers to adjust to their new team quickly, but it's clear that goal is a bit lofty. Quincy Guerrier, De'Vion Harmon, Jacob Young and Rivaldo Soares have each had their struggles this year and have contributed to the inconsistency that Oregon has had through the first few weeks.

"In retrospect, I think we made some assumptions about guys and how quickly they would come along that were unrealistic," Altman said. "They have not made the adjustment to playing for us. Again, we just got to keep working. Everybody's a little down. As competitors, you know you've underperformed, and that bothers you. So you got to fight, you got to compete."

Altman also noted the offseason injuries that Guerrier, Franck Kepnang and N'Faly Dante have been recovering from and that they have a lot to improve on as well. He mentioned that Will Richardson has to live up to the high expectations that were on him prior to the season.

Richardson is coming off of arguably his worst shooting game of his career, connecting on just two of his 14 attempts in the loss to Arizona State, including 1-of-9 from three.

"[Stephen] Curry and the greatest shooters of all time have all had bad shooting nights," Altman said. "We've had really good players here that have had bad shooting nights. But then on those nights, defensively, boards, assists, whatever you can do to contribute. How are you going to pick up on those nights where offensively you struggle? Will's got to manage that. He's got to manage the expectations."

It's not just the poor shooting that has hampered the Ducks this year. Out of 358 teams, Oregon ranks tied for 253rd in scoring (68.3 points per game), 291st in rebounds (33.3 per game), 228th in assists (12.4 per game), 152nd in assist-to-turnover ratio (1.04), and 281st in defensive field goal percentage (45.0%).

"It's not going to be easy to get it back," Altman said of his team getting back to winning basketball. "It's not like turning on a light switch, fellas. We're going to have to battle our tails off to get it back, and you're going to have to show great resolve to get it done."

The turning point in the season after two dominant victories to open the season was the blowout loss to BYU in Portland. Oregon has not looked like the team that rocked a solid SMU team on Nov. 12, and the inconsistency in so many areas, Altman says has shown up in practice as well.

He was brutally honest with his team about its trajectory.

"The inconsistency that within games and then obviously from game-to-game has been dramatic," Altman said. "A lot of it is self-inflicted. Some of it is the opponents, but a lot of it's us. Do I think we can turn it around quickly? Probably not. I was very upfront with the team. This is something we're going to have to do every day in practice for a long time to be a consistent team."

Despite a couple of embarrassing losses to start the year leading to the worst start through nine games in 12 years, Altman is confident that the team will show the resolve necessary to overcome the adversity and get back on track.

"I told the guys that we need to focus on one thing. We just need to focus on getting better. We've got to get back, just work a day at a time, worry about ourselves, get better and try to put ourselves in position to win games, and then if we do that, then maybe we can put some things together.

"We've had a lot of other teams that have had to fight some type of adversity and fought back. I'm still hopeful and confident that this team will."

If anyone can solve this Rubik's Cube, no matter how gargantuan the task may be, it's Dana Altman. This Oregon team may be dormant now, but don't be surprised if he's got this team earning multiple Seth Davis sharpies in March.

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