Social media loves Dana Altman for his so-square-he's-hip style and his knack for winning big games in March. The meme goes, "His name is Dana Altman, and he aligns Rubik's Cubes."
With the Big Ten tournament beginning Thursday morning, he's spinning one of green, yellow, white, and sterling silver, looking for the right combination of butt-chewing, referee-glaring, and strategy to produce another successful search for One Shining Moment.
Altman has won 20 or more games for 15 straight years, and at Oregon, he's reached the NCAA Tournament seven times in the last 13. In 2017, the Ducks made it all the way to the Final Four. Since 2010, he's won a phenomenal 74 games in March, a record of 74-30, a winning percentage of 71.2 percent. The March win total is the best in the country over those 15 seasons.
Now, in 2024-25, he's got another squad poised for a deep tournament run, a group with several of the elements needed to surprise people in the pressure cooker of tournament basketball. They've got a versatile big man in Nate Bittle who can score (a career-high 36 points against Washington on Sunday), rebound (12 boards against the Dawgs, 10 against Iowa, both on the road), and defend (named to the Big Ten All-Defensive team, along with guard TJ Bamba).
These Ducks are resilient. They won with a clutch defensive stand late in the fourth quarter and a dominant overtime period against Washington, and in February, they beat No. 11 Wisconsin in Madison after guard Jackson Shelstad buried a deep three to force overtime.
The one glaring question mark about this edition of Altman's magical manipulation of the color squares is the Ducks' maddening tendency to hit long scoring droughts. There are times when the lid seems to go over the basket, and nothing works. In Seattle, they compounded that with 13 turnovers, which UDumb converted into 21 points. It kept that 13-18 squad in the game.
They do have three shooters with positive range from three-point territory in Shelstad (37.9 percent), Bittle (33.7 percent), and guard Keeshawn Barthelemy, a 6-foot-1, 180-pound senior from Montreal, Quebec, who's hit on 42.5 percent of his threes. In tournament play, getting a shooter or two with a hot hand is pivotal to surviving and advancing in the ramped-up atmosphere of The Big Dance.
That journey begins for them this morning as they take on 19-12 Indiana at Gainbridge Fieldhouse. The game will be broadcast on the Big Ten Network, with tip-off at 9 a.m. PT.