The big man pulled up from deep.
It’s become a regular occurrence when Oregon men’s basketball plays: The lanky, 7-foot center finds his way to the wing. The ball comes. His mark doesn’t.
Splash. It’s what Nate Bittle does.
“It spreads the floor,” Oregon head coach Dana Altman said after Bittle made two 3-point shots against Maryland. “He can shoot ‘em. He shot well in practice (even though) his percentage in game hasn’t been what we want. His looks were good tonight.”
It’s been a standout year for the center (avg. career-bests 13.6 points per game, 51.4% field goal), who played in just five games last year. A broken wrist in his third game of the season held him down. Then an illness kept him sidelined, frustratingly, for almost the rest of the year while Oregon made its run to a Pac-12 Championship and NCAA Tournament appearance.
He’s back now. He gained 30 pounds since overcoming the illness, Bittle said in a preseason interview. He felt “100%” in April, nearly a month after the Ducks exited the Tournament. In that same interview, though, Bittle foreshadowed his rise. “We did a lot of footwork stuff this year,” the center said, “(and I’ll) play on the perimeter more.”
Play on the perimeter he has. Bittle is shooting 3.2 3-point efforts per game — fourth on the team, just behind the Ducks’ three guards — and he’s making them, too. There’s no better example than Oregon’s January road trip, where Bittle rolled into Columbus, Ohio and drained four of eight shots from deep, including three in the second half as the Ducks came from behind to win. Bittle made the final free throw too, for good measure. Why not?
Oregon looks different this year. There’s no more star reliance, not really. It’s a team effort, and if that means the 7-foot senior from Central Point, Ore. can drop a few in the bucket from beyond the arc, by all means, fire away: Nate Bittle is a 3-point weapon.