The 2024-25 season marks Dana Altman’s 36th as a Division I head coach and his 15th as the head coach of Oregon’s men’s basketball program. Over his previous 35 seasons as a head coach, Altman has solidified his status as a college basketball legend.
Altman began his head coaching career as Marshall University’s head coach in 1989 and became head coach at Kansas State University a year later. He led the team to a March Madness appearance in the 1992-93 season but soon moved again, taking over at Creighton University before the 1994-95 season.
After finally earning a winning record in the 1997-98 season, Altman’s career took off. The Creighton Bluejays appeared in five straight NCAA tournaments between 1999 and 2003 and won the Missouri Valley Conference Title in 2001-02.
Altman would make two more NCAA tournament appearances with Creighton in 2005 and 2007, but never took the team past the Round of 32. He departed Creighton for the University of Oregon before the 2010 season, leaving the Bluejays with a career record of 327 wins and 176 losses. Greg McDermott, who’s coached Creighton ever since, begins the 2024-25 season only two wins shy of Altman’s program-best total.
Altman is also Oregon’s all-time winningest coach, holding an even better record of 349-152. He’s also the winningest coach in Pac-12 Tournament history (25-9) and is tied with former Arizona head coach Lute Olson for the most Pac-12 Championship titles with four.
However, those tournament records, as well as Oregon’s status as the last-ever Pac-12 men’s basketball champions, are now part of a closed chapter in history. Altman knows that any future tournament success, be it conference or postseason, will only come following a successful season of Big Ten basketball.
For Altman, who guided Oregon through the 2018 introduction of the transfer portal and the 2021 introduction of NIL rights, Oregon’s conference shift is another change, and has left the Ducks at a potential disadvantage in comparison to the Big Ten’s prior members.
“Those teams only have to make one trip, so I don’t think it’s that big of a deal for them,” Altman said of those schools journeying west to play the division’s four ex-Pac-12 newcomers. Although Oregon will make five trips east, Altman doesn’t think the change will affect his players too harshly either.
“Fortunately, [the trips are] spaced out,” Altman said. “It will be more travel than usual, but we’re making some arrangements to make it as comfortable as possible for our guys.”
Oregon has three non-conference matchups remaining before its Dec. 4 Big Ten debut at USC. Altman’s Ducks will have plenty of things to work on in the meantime.
During Oregon’s Media Day, Altman repeatedly stressed the need for a different team mindset. “They all wanna score, they all wanna shoot the three, but we gotta get them to guard and rebound a lot more than what we’ve been doing,” he said.
Altman named that strategy as the key to Oregon’s last season, which saw them win the last-ever Pac-12 Tournament and advance to the NCAA Round of 32. “It wasn’t like we were scoring all the time. We had some good offensive outbursts at times, but defensively we just finally limited some possessions and started rebounding the ball better,” Altman said of last year’s postseason success.
Altman is an Oregon hoops legend. Now, he’s preparing to lead the Ducks against new challenges in the Big Ten Conference. But if history is any guide, Altman’s Ducks will be winning games and appearing in postseasons for as long as he continues to call the shots.
