2010 Ducks Basketball: What Altman has and needs to do with the roster

Now that Oregon finally has a coach I think it would be useful to take a look at where the roster stands right now.  This is just a quick post to look at a couple of areas of the Ducks roster as well as some areas of need both from a statistical background as well as recruiting and class situation.

First of all let's take a look at what Oregon actually lost from last season.

From a production stand point the loss of TP will be the greatest to try and replace.  If you look at the numbers from the season Wiley, Humphrey and Crittle combined to produce 9.1% of the minutes (or about 18 of the 200 minutes of playing time per game), 8.1% of the points, 8% of the rebounds, 4.8% of the assists and 8.1% of the turnovers.  By contrast, Porter accounted for 13% of the minutes, 16% of the points, 6% of the rebounds, 15% of the assists and 17% of the turnovers (an interesting side note: Wiley, Humprey and Porter combined for 50.1% of the three point shots by the Ducks in '09-'10.  If ever there was a time to switch a team away from the 3-point focused offense, now would be a great time).  While I will agree that losing Humphrey, Wiley and Crittle is detrimental from a depth standpoint, I believe their production loss will really not be all that great.

Here are the players that are left on the Ducks roster (I'm including Catron for right now, but he is grouped in the bottom three because of the uncertainty of whether he will play again next year.  For argument's sake let's assume that Catron is granted his medical red-shirt and will be on the team next year).

Looking at the top 9 returners you can see that Oregon has 5-6 front court players; Dunigan, Jacob, Singler, Catron, Wilson and Longmire (where Wilson and Longmire could play either guard or forward if need be).  The backcourt will be manned by Armstead, Williams, Sim and possibly Longmire or Wilson.

Finally, let's talk about what Oregon needs this coming year and going forward.  With 13 scholarships available and 8 probable locks returning Oregon could sign as many as 5 players in this recruiting class.   That seems rather unlikely considering how late Oregon is to the game right now.  Also, I'd expect Altman to follow through on his word about players wanting to be here and liking walk-ons so I'd expect Elorriaga and Fearn to be around.  Depending on Catron's medical red-shirt Oregon will have somewhere between 4-5 scholarships to offer this coming year.

Looking at scholarship player grade levels, Oregon will have 2 seniors, 5 Juniors, and  2 Sophomores.  Ideally, Altman would want to try and get 2-3 Freshman signees and add another 1-2 from JC at the Sophomore level (remember that Armstead and Jacob were both JC Sophomore transfers and they worked out pretty well).  This would make the classes look like this; 2-5-3-3.  While Oregon would still be pretty top heavy at the Junior class, it would really break up the classes better then they have been in a long time.

Lastly, with regard to the positions, out of the 4-5 players that Oregon adds I'd like to see a couple of guards and maybe a forward or two depending on skill level.  Oregon is pretty set at PG for right now with Armstead getting about 32 minutes a game (leaving only about 8 minutes for the backup).  I'm not totally sold on Sim being a full time replacement for Armstead or sub for Williams so there is definitely an opening for a 2 guard to compete and get some minutes.  With Crittle gone, there is also room now for someone to play behind Jacob and Dunigan at the 4-5.  All-in-all, if Altman is able to add a SG, SF, and F/C, Oregon will have a nice 10-12 man rotation for Altman to run his pressing defense and attacking offense with.

Hope this helps clarify some of where the Ducks stand with regard to personnel and roster.  Should be an interesting couple of weeks as Altman hits the recruiting trail hard and rounds out the roster for the upcoming year.

Go Ducks!