Oregon’s Dana Altman and Big Ten media day: 3 things we learned about the Ducks

The Oregon men’s basketball team left the Pac-12 as the conference tournament champion.

The Ducks will soon find out if they can recreate that level of success in their new conference.

The 2024-25 season begins for Oregon on Nov. 4 with a game against UC Riverside at Matthew Knight Arena, and the Ducks have a team with six new players – five transfers, one freshman – and needing to replace star center N’Faly Dante and guard Jermaine Couisnard, whose late-season heroics lifted the Ducks during the conference tournament in Las Vegas last March and also to a win in their opening game of the NCAA Tournament.

Coach Dana Altman and his two grad transfers — forward Brandon Angel and guard T.J. Bamba — took part in Big Ten media day Thursday at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center just outside Chicago.

Here are three takeaways from their interviews.

Oregon is going through preseason practices with a full roster

If that doesn’t bring you a sigh of relief, you haven’t been following along the last few seasons.

Offseason, preseason and early season injuries have plagued the Ducks in recent years.

Last season, Oregon was without Jackson Shelstad and Mookie Cook on opening night and by Thanksgiving had already lost Dante and Nate Bittle.

“Everybody is healthy now, which is a change for us,” Altman said. “Last four years have been kind of rough on our health. … I like our competitiveness in practice, and right now we’re healthy. If we can stay that way, I like our depth.”

Point guard Jackson Shelstad looks like an improved player

The sophomore was named second-team all-conference in the Gannett preseason media poll and Altman said Shelstad comes back bigger and stronger than what he was as a college basketball rookie last season.

“That jump from freshman to sophomore, that’s usually as coach the biggest jump you see because they have a good feel for what it takes, they go and work on their game in the offseason wanting to get bigger, stronger, ready for a more physical game,” Altman said. “He’s got his work cut out for him. There’s a lot of good guards in the Big Ten.”

The Ducks’ two player reps gave their thoughts on competing in the Big Ten

Bamba spent three years at Washington State and one at Villanova before transferring to Oregon, and Angel spent his previous four seasons at Stanford.

Thus, playing in the Big Ten will be just as new to them as the rest of the team.

“I’m expecting it to be super competitive, fiery,” Bamba said. “I’m expecting the atmospheres to be insane. I’m looking forward to that and I’m looking forward to seeing what we’re capable of doing in the Big Ten and us showing the world and the Big Ten what we’re about and how we’re going to impose our will on our opponents.”

Angel, whose whole career was spent in the Pac-12, knows the two conferences have reputation for playing a different style, but Oregon is ready for the challenge ahead.

“Big Ten’s known to be a tough conference,” he said. “Tough, physical, hard-nosed basketball and I think the group of guys that we have that translates really well. We have experience, we have toughness, we have physicality.”

Chris Hansen covers University of Oregon football, men’s basketball, track and field, cross country and softball for The Register-Guard. You can reach him on X @chansen_RG or by email at chansen@registerguard.com. 

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: What Oregon’s Dana Altman said at Big Ten men’s basketball media day