Now that summer is here, it’s time once again to look at some advanced statistical measurements for how Oregon teams did this past season. I’m beginning this off season looking at men’s basketball. I’ll be doing player performance breakdowns (similar to what I have done the past couple of summers) later on. Today, I am going to look at team performance statistics for Coach Dana Altman’s 2025-2026 squad compared to his own prior teams, their counterparts in the Big Ten, and teams that have made the Elite
8.
All of the numbers I use in this article come courtesy of sports-reference.com’s data portal Stathead to compile advanced statistics for these teams.
I’ll go over the summary descriptions for the metrics I chose to use, each of which is a rather involved formula. All of these definitions come courtesy of sports-reference.com.
Pace — An estimate of team possessions per 40 minutes.
Ortg — Offensive Rating; an estimate of points scored per 100 possessions.
Drtg — Defensive Rating; an estimate of points allowed per 100 possessions.
eFG% — Effective Field Goal Percentage; shooting percentage adjusted for the fact that 3pt attempts are more valuable than 2pt attempts.
TS% — True Shooting Percentage; a measure of shooting efficiency that incorporates 2pt attempts, 3pt attempts, and free throws.
TOV% — Turnover Percentage; an estimate of turnovers per 100 possessions.
ORB% — Offensive Rebound Percentage; an estimate of the percentage of available offensive rebounds grabbed.
DRB% — Defensive Rebound Percentage; an estimate of the percentage of available defensive rebounds grabbed.
FTr — Free Throw Rate; number of free throw attempts per field goal attempt.
To start off with, here are the performance numbers for Oregon teams since the Covid-19 shortened 2019-2020 season.
These numbers show just how much of a recent anomaly the 2025-2026 team was. It’s no secret why this team finished with a losing record; their eFG% and TS% were both worse than their opponents. Time will tell whether this was a one off for Oregon basketball or a harbinger of troubles ahead.
How did the past season compare to the Duck’s Big Ten peers? I computed the median numbers for all 18 Big Ten teams in the two seasons Oregon has competed in the conference. The table repeats Oregon’s numbers from 2025-2026 for easier comparison.
Oof… no way to sugar coat this. The Ducks were worse than a “middle weight” conference opponent in almost every category. Even in the statistics where they are on the correct side of the median, it’s by significantly less than a full standard deviation.
Obviously this year’s Oregon team was nowhere near the Elite 8 caliber I’ve used a reference point over the past couple of years. It’s still interesting to see how far the team has to go to get back to that level.
Watching this year’s team it was obvious they were struggling to work with each other to move the ball, which is born out in the Pace numbers. It is notable that the Ducks seem to have done very well driving to the iron, as their team FTr was actually above the Elite 8 median. That might be partly due to a slow pace of play and simply taking fewer shots, but the difference is notable enough I suspect it is also a point of emphasis.
Altman has his work cut out for him and he knows it. The team has been torn down to the studs and remade this off season. Later in the summer I’ll be looking at individual players and position groups to see where the most improvement is needed.
