No March Madness for Oregon men. How did the Ducks' season go wrong?

The NCAA Tournament resumes March 19 with 64 men’s basketball teams embarking on their journey through the opening stages of the Big Dance.

Oregon won’t be among them after the Ducks’ season ended March 10 with a loss in the first round of the Big Ten Tournament.

Being left out of March Madness is unfamiliar territory for Oregon, which participated in a postseason tournament in 15 straight seasons between 2011 and 2025, including nine NCAA Tournament berths.

But the 2025-26 season was a bust for the Ducks , who finished with a 12-20 record. It was their first losing season since 2008-09 – two years before coach Dana Altman took over the Oregon program – and their first season without at least 20 wins since 2010-11

“I'm disappointed. It's been 30 years since I had a losing season, or my teams have had a losing season,” said Altman, who last had a record below .500 as a coach in 1995-96 when his Creighton team went 14-15. “It's kind of hard to digest.”

It’s not hard to dissect, however.

The Ducks were by and large done in by injuries and a poorly constructed roster. The former was mostly a matter of happenstance. The latter, Altman has admitted, is on himself.

“I made some decisions and we took some guys that aren’t experienced enough,” he said. “And it caught us when our experienced players went down.”

Oregon men’s basketball plagued by injuries

The Ducks’ season got off to an ominous start when junior point guard Jackson Shelstad broke his hand during a preseason practice.

The preseason all-Big Ten selection missed the first game of the season, returned to play 12 straight, then suffered another injury to the same hand Dec. 28 against Omaha and missed the final 19 games of the season.

That was the worst of Oregon’s injury woes, but Jackson was far from the only player hindered by health.

Preseason all-Big Ten senior center Nate Bittle missed seven games and was hindered in several more by a pair of ankle injuries.

Transfer forward Devon Pryor , whose length and athleticism were expected to make him a defensive stopper, was in and out of the lineup all season with a nagging groin injury. He missed 16 games total, including the final 11.

Newcomer Ege Demir, a 6-10 center from Turkey, was expected to back up Bittle but he injured his shoulder in January diving for a ball and missed the last 13 games.

With all of those injuries, Altman’s projected starting lineup of Shelstad, Bittle, forward Kwame Evans Jr. , Pryor and guard Takai Simpkins played a total of four games together.

Shelstad and Bittle played just 10 games together and the Ducks’ big three of Bittle, Shelstad and Evans were together for just eight games.

Only two players played in every game – forward Sean Stewart , who made 23 starts and averaged 6.5 points and 5.2 rebounds, and guard Dezdrick Lindsay, who started eight games and averaged 5.3 points and 2.8 rebounds. Both were in their first season of game time for the Ducks.

Oregon’s stalwarts were Evans and Simpkins. Evans, a former five-star recruit in his third season as a Duck averaged career highs of 13.3 points and 7.4 rebounds. He started all 30 games he played. Simpkins, a fifth-year senior transfer from Elon, started all 31 games he played, averaged 12.5 points and led the Ducks in 3-point shooting with 50 makes on 140 attempts (35.7%).

There just wasn't much behind them when Jackson, Pryor and Demir were lost and when Bittle was injured.

First-year point guard Wei Lin , a scoring phenom during three seasons in the Chinese Basketball Association, didn’t arrive until late September and struggled to adapt to the collegiate game both on offense and defense. Unable to adequately fill in for Shelstad, he was eventually replaced in the starting lineup by walk-on Drew Carter .

Reserve forward Oleksandr Kobzystyi and guard Jamari Phillips were also largely unproductive players off the bench. Freshman guard JJ Frakes didn’t play at all and freshman forward Efe Vatan played in just five games after dealing with an injury for most of the season.

“I’ve got to do a better job,” Altman said. “I didn’t have the depth that we needed to fight, to compete, and that’s on me. It’s a long season and you gotta have the depth. We had inexperienced people for our depth and you can’t be inexperienced and try to compete.

“I tell my players all the time, they gotta look in the mirror. Old coach gotta look in the mirror, too. I didn’t have us in position when the injuries hit for us to be competitive.”

Where does Oregon men’s basketball go from here?

Bittle, Simpkins, Kobzystyi and Carter were seniors and are out of eligibility.

Shelstad and Evans are going to be seniors and will be hot commodities if they choose to leave Oregon and enter the transfer portal.

Stewart will also be a senior and is on his third team after playing at Duke as a freshman and Ohio State as a sophomore. Pryor, who played his first two seasons at Texas , will also be a senior.

It would seem logical to assume Oregon would make a strong push to keep those four players in the fold.

The Ducks also have signed five-star small forward Tajh Ariza.

All of that would just be a start for a team that needs a major roster reboot.

“We’ve got to get some experience in the portal,” Altman said. “We’ve got to get some talented freshmen, and Tajh is, and we’re gonna bring some other guys in for visits. We got to get a core group back, which won’t be easy with the portal. Everybody looks at every option they have. That’s just the way it’s going.

“I want guys that want to be at Oregon. I’ve said that 100 times. We can’t win if we don’t have guys that want to be here, want to get on a plane and go for six days on a road trip. They got to want to do that. They got to want to be here. And so hopefully we’ll get that group together that wants to be here and is talented and more experienced.”

Chris Hansen covers University of Oregon football, men’s basketball, track and field, cross country and softball for The Register-Guard. You can reach him at chansen@registerguard.com .

This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: No March Madness for Oregon men. How did the Ducks' season go wrong?