Not only should no one be shocked, no one should even raise an eye brow over this.

Sure, Armstead would have been one of the best players on the Ducks 10-11 squad, and showed flashes last year that let the mind wander a bit. But, come on….Oregon stinks, and will continue to stink in the next couple of years regardless of whether Armstead stuck around. Don’t let Duck homers/apologists fool you, this is absolutely the right move for Malcolm. Honestly, at times I feel like I’m the only sober guy at the bar, amongst a bunch of people 4 Jager bombs and 6 Ninkasi’s deep when it comes to Oregon athletics. How can no one else see what is to come? I mean, obviously the players do. From now on I would like to be known as the ‘arbiter of truth’ when it comes to talking Ducks (Klonoski, Brags, Gums, and others be damned).

Why would a player with any negligible amount of game stick around for the Dana Altman era? What, did anyone expect the cries of ‘hey he did develop Kyle Korver’ to resonate with anybody? Come on now, the guy came from the state of Nebraska, and no not the large state college in Lincoln, but the private school in Omaha that is more known for pumping out dentists than anything in athletics.

Five players have now defected since Big Ern got canned (still the right move, just an awful hire) and my question at this point is, do the Ducks even have enough players to form a squad….

Sadly, they probably do. But hey Duck fans be happy. Sure, all Ernie could do was recruit, but he was awful at in-game coaching, right? That’s why everyone wanted him gone, and it looks like we got the exact opposite now. Not only can Altman not recruit players to come to Oregon, but he can’t even make a pitch to them to make them stay. But hey, I hear he teaches a great off-ball screen and works wonders with nonathletic guys plodding along on their way to text book power lay-ins!

Here is to depleted rosters, bad records, uninspiring hires  and half full $200 million dollar arenas funded by state insured bonds.

Go Ducks!

One of the Madison Memorial’s star players, Vander Blue, will now be one of Wilson’s teammates at Marquette.

Ho hum, I mean it’s just a highly sought after recruit leaving.

We still got Dunnigan to lead the charge on underachieving players that were bestowed the honor of being a Golden Arch selection.

I’m sure Wilson is good, but it doesn’t bother me that he’s leaving. The Oregon program stinks and maybe it’s for the better to purge the roster as much as possible and just start from the bottom. Besides if you ever watched a Creighton game, it’s clear that Coach Altman doesn’t have much use for long and athletic players.

www.firedanaaltman.com

Sallie has shown the ability to score in bunches, tallying 35 points against Cal State Northridge in the ’08-09 season. He’s also a very good three-point shooter who shot better than 40 percent behind the arc during two years with the Tigers.

This is what you get for stealing Kenny Payne and his connections with World Wide Wes, Coach Cal!

You take our best recruiter, we take a player from one of your previous stops. Are we even now???

Call me crazy, but doesn’t this seem kind of odd? Like, how many years does a guy get to play? Though, I’ll take academic risks and bad dudes every time, and twice on Thursdays and Saturdays. Any chance we can get Joey Dorsey as well as some sort of a package deal?

So the question is: who are they playing?  As a Duck fan, even though the final score just maaaay be tipped in the visiting team’s direction a tad, I would love to see Oregon get that chance.  What do they have to lose?  Every team gets demolished by Coach Cal’s teams the last few years.  He has like 8 losses in 3 years.  And from Oregon’s standpoint, they’ve been getting demolished by just about every team on their schedule for a couple years now.  A new coach, hopefully a new style, hopefully a new attitude – who knows, hopefully a new result.  If not, BFD, it’s one game before Pac 10 play begins. 

To my surprise, Calipari wouldn’t divulge what teams they were considering.  Even though it’s against the rules, he generally acts as if those don’t apply to him anyway.  Calipari mentioned it is between 2-3 teams which has to be between the Ducks, Beavers, and Pilots, right?  No chance Rose Garden officials, or whoever signs off on this deal, allows a team from Washington in to play this game.  Even Gonzaga. 

Do you want to see the Ducks play Kentucky this year?  If not, what team do you want to see go up against 3 or 4 2011 NBA lottery picks?

I don’t even care if his range is only 3 feet out and gets abused on defense like every ginger step child in the world. With hops like those, nope, I don’t care one bit. In fact, since the Ducks are going to stink anyways, I would rather them stink with guys that dunk hard and jump high than guys with set-shots and 17 inch verticals.

More Dwayne Polee for your viewing pleasure:

Let the Dana Altman era begin.

Or something like that…

What are the expectations now attached to this hire? Honestly, I have zero clue, none. He seems like a okay coach, boring but stable. Though maybe at this point boring and stable is just what the University of Oregon needs. It’s safe to say the Ducks didn’t exactly “win the press conference” with this hire, and his initial meeting with the media was nothing more vanilla than Kyle Korver.

Safe is okay in general, but is safe fine with these numbers attached to it?

- Seven year contract.
- Base salary of $450,000, talent fee at $1,350,000, adding up to a $1.8 million salary.
- Performance incentives  reaching $400,000 with an NCAA Tournament championship.
- Academic incentives, based on graduation rates and academic progress rates, up to $120,000.
- Ticket sales incentives (15 percent above gross revenue of $4 million.

Does this hire make you anymore likely to buy season tickets at the house that sneakers built?

Yeah didn’t think so. But it’s also not making you pull your coin out of the DAF.

I want to crush this hire, and crush the deluded ways of the Kilkenny and Knight. And I want to do it in the biggest way, but for some reason I can’t. That doesn’t mean I’m sold on the hire, because I’m not, but I’m also not sure this is the unmitigated disaster I thought the eventual hire would surely be.

It was appropriate to have the press conference in the empty and unfinished bowels of Matthew Knight Arena.

Much like the on-going construction on the arena, this hire leaves me empty and still wondering what the final product will look like.

It’s official, UO can call off the coach-sniffing-bloodhounds now.  Dana Altman is now the face of Ducks men’s basketball and the man that will open up the sparkling new Matthew Knight Arena this fall.

Formally introduced today at 1pm in Matthew Knight Arena.

Time to learn up on the new hoops dude on campus … here is a spitball collage of data …

Career record: 410-243 (.628)

• @Marshall: 15-13 (.536) 1989–1990
• @Kansas State: 68-54 (.557) 1990-1994
• @Creighton: 327-176 (.650) 1994-2010

Let’s hope he lasts more than one day as UO coach.

Go out and buy Dana’s High Post dvd …

Dana Altman: The Complete Guide to the High Post Offense vs. Any Defense
If your team is without a dominant post player and you need an effective offense to utilize the players you have, this video is for you! The High Post Offense is a great offense, utilizing guards and undersized post players with great success and creates spacing, works against pressure defense, has many options, and is limited only by your imagination. Coach Altman shows you his base set for running the offense, shows you the correct positioning, movements, and cuts. He then goes into different set plays you can run out of the offense to utilize different strengths you may have or exploit potential weaknesses your opponent may have. Altman ends the tape by showing you different ways to run a delay game when time is critical and shows you different ways of transitioning into the offense from a fastbreak. Excellent instruction!

And then buy his Press dvd …

Creighton Green & Blue Press
Coach Altman’s press promotes aggressiveness, helps control tempo, hides deficiencies and utilizes a deep bench. Using players in a clinic setting the Green and Blue Press takes shape starting with the 4-man on the ball backed by the 2-man and 3-man at the free throw line. The third line of defense is the point guard near half court with the 5-man back to protect the basket. Once the ball comes in it is trapped and the other defenders adjust. This immediately disrupts the flow of the game for the opponent. The key to the Blue is to trap the ball in an area 10 feet on each side of the half court line. Altman teaches his players to trap immediately when the ball crosses half court. Both presses are used during games based on the kind of tempo and pressure desired

By John Hunt, The Oregonian

April 24, 2010, 10:26AM

Oregon’s 37-day old search for a basketball coach may be nearing an end.

Creighton coach Dana Altman is in serious discussions with former Oregon athletic director Pat Kilkenny in Indianapolis and could be announced as the Ducks’ next coach this weekend.

Dana Altman“As you know, he’s traveled a lot, and the one name that continues to come up as one of the best coaches in America is Dana Altman,” senior associate athletic director Joe Giansante said.

Kilkenny did not immediately return phone calls, and he does have an interview with another coach scheduled today in Indianapolis.

Altman, 51, has led Creighton to the postseason 13 times in 16 seasons (7 NCAA, 5 NIT, 1 CIT) and resurrected the Nebraska school from bottom dwellars to conference champions.

Kilkenny turned to Altman this week after his name was brought up several times in discussions with other coaches and consultants, Giansante said.

Many of those coaches, such as Gonzaga’s Mark Few, Pitt’s Jamie Dixon, Butler’s Brad Stevens, Missouri’s Mike Anderson and others, decided not to take the Oregon job. Thus, the coaching search that has stretched beyond a month.

But in Altman, the Ducks would get a coach who is considered one of the better bench coaches in the business.

Altman guided the Bluejays to an 18-16 record in 2009-10, winning five of their last six games to ensure a 13th consecutive winning season. It was the first time in 12 years Creighton failed to win 20 games.

Unless Kyle Korver comes along as some sort of a ‘package deal’, I’m guessing this isn’t the sexy hire that Nike U wanted.

That puts the body count to what, almost 10?

Probably shouldn’t be that big of a surprise. I mean, this is a school where Ernie Kent is the most accomplished coach in it’s history…

There is a difference between ‘testing the waters’ with coaches that are out of reach, and just being delusional. Kilkenny and Oregon are delusional. Even Elwood P. Dowd had a better shot at having others seeing Harvey, than Oregon has had at signing any of their targets.

At this point Oregon should just hire whoever wants the job. Whether it is P.J. Carliesimo, Terry Porter or Randy Bennett, just hire him. The hire will be underwhelming, but hey, at least it’s a hire!

No matter who they hire at this point, let’s be honest, the next two years are going be equally as awful as the last two. There are no more ‘slam dunk’ hires out here, so let’s just concede and go for a power lay up.

Matthew Knight Arena is going to be nice, real nice. But it is too big at 12,000+, and it will be interesting to see how long the novelty of a new arena keeps is fairly full. The product on the court is going to be awful, and Eugene is not a real basketball crazed town, so how long until the arena becomes the giant white elephant in the room?

The better question is, how long until Oregon basketball becomes the white elephant…

At this moment there is no more sugar coating this–no one wants the Oregon job. I don’t blame them, and nor should you. But that shouldn’t stop even the most ardent of Duck fans from snickering a little bit at the failures of the search committee.

Because at this point, if you’re not laughing, you are crying.

After a month of wild speculation and some completely unattainable names, it seems the UO brass may finally be getting it. Aside from the fact that Oregon is at best the 5-6th best job in the Pac, the search was leading them to guys that were ‘home’ and in no way looking to leave. Izzo’s idea of an off-season vacation is probably catching a weekend series at Comerica, the guy wasn’t leaving the state of Michigan. Brad Stevens, also, not leaving Indianapolis.

Mike Anderson though? Absolutely. He has no ties to Mizzou, and has been dubbed “The Suitcase” by some in the wake of his constant searching of jobs when he was at UAB. Anderson may be a carpetbagger, fine, carpetbaggers are usually that way for one reason–they win!

As an assistant at Arkansas, Anderson coached in two title games, winning one. At UAB he had success, even upsetting Kentucky in the 2006 tourney. Taking over at Mizzou in 2006 ( a program that was an absolute disaster thanks to the Quinn Snyder era) his successful run-n-gun system paid immediate dividends. Making the tourney the last two years, winning one game this year, and going 31-7 en route to the Elite Eight in 08-09.

Not only does he win, but he runs the aesthetically pleasing up-tempo and pressing style, that Kent often talked about, and the UO brass pine for. It’s a style that athletes want to play in, may get Terrence Jones to stay in-state, and more than quell the mass hysteria amongst UO fans and Oregonian writers about the program.

This potential hire gets tricky when it comes to the money aspect. Anderson makes $1.5 mil at Mizzou, and is reportedly being offered $3 mil to come to Eugene. Evan Longoria would sum that up perfectly by saying “That’s a lot of cheese.” I’m not sure how Mr Kelly would feel about having the basketball coach make about a million more per year than him, but I’m sure there would be a raise coming his way. The question is, could the UO afford to pay Anderson that kind of money, knowing what kind of financial dominoes that would knock over? Don’t forget about that pesky couple mil that Bellotti is due…

Assuming the financial aspects work, I don’t see how this could not be considered a huge hire by the Ducks. After a month of searching, Kilkenny needs to get this right and bring closure to the search. A Mike Anderson hire, would do both.