I said this initially as well. If you've got 20 plus years in and no one really knows who you are then you're not a great hire.
Duck fans wanted more consistent yearly success than Ernie. Altman was pretty much a guarantee of that, but little else.
It's funny to me that Oregon football is a Top 10 program with almost zero local talent while the basketball program is mediocre with tons of in-state talent. If the AD had any fucking sense it would have just built a normal college level arena and spent the rest on an elite recruiting staff. If Oregon could keep the talent from Oregon home they'd dominate.
They didn't though. They build an arena that looks like a tin foil UFO in the middle of a nature scene with a gimmicky court and make medium level hires and watch all the in-state talent run away. Let's be honest though, the locker room has Jamaican Rosewood floors so team success means very little.
Someone like Josh Pasleft with a bright future who is a tremendous recruiter would have been a much smarter hire.
A typical basketball team recruits 4-5 guys a season. So teams like Kentucky, UCLA, Arizona, Duke, Kansas, etc. are very careful on who they pick. If a player from Oregon is on their list, they will get him. It's not even a question.
The slim number of recruits makes basketball a much more nationally recruited sport, unlike football, where Alabama, Texas, USC, Florida St, etc. can pluck 15-20 guys within 100 miles off campus.
Where football can even itself out, basketball is all about who your top 2-3 guys are. Oregon unfortunately will never be a basketball powerhouse. They don't have the tradition. Basketball is interesting in that the top 10-15 programs hasn't really changed in the last 20 years.