‘I’m so proud of him;’ Dana Altman reacts to Jackson Shelstad’s remarkable tournament run at West Linn
It’s been a frustrating start to the basketball season for Dana Altman and the Oregon Ducks, who ended the 2022 calendar year with an 8-6 record, suffering abysmal home losses to both UC Irvine and Utah Valley. They’ve been dealing with injuries from the very start, missing key contributors like Nate Bittle, Jermain Couisnard, Keeshawn Barthelemy, and Brennan Rigsby for a good portion of the year.
With all of those negatives going on in the program, you’ve got to try and take the positives where you can get them. So when 4-star Oregon signee Jackson Shelstad went on a remarkable run in the Les Schwab Invitational Tournament over the past week, averaging 33 points per game and upsetting No. 16 Sierra Canyon and No. 1 Duncanville to win the tournament championship, it definitely qualifies as good news for the Ducks.
“Well there’s a positive thing that we can talk about,” Dana Altman said on Saturday night after Oregon’s win over Oregon State. “Wow. He really had a great tournament. He played his tail off.”
The Ducks signed Shelstad earlier this year as part of the 2023 recruiting class that ranks No. 8 in the nation, also including 5-star KJ Evans and 5-star Mookie Cook. Shelstad is currently getting all of the attention, though, drawing comparisons to Oregon legend Payton Pritchard, who also had a stand-out career at West Linn before setting records with the Ducks and going on to a solid contributor for the Boston Celtics.
“He’s a competitive young man, I’ve liked him since he was coming to our camp in seventh and eighth grade with the West Linn team, he was just so little,” Altman said of Shelstad. “Now he’s grown up and he battled his tail off against two really good teams. I definitely was following the games the last two nights. So proud of him. I just love his competitiveness. I don’t know what it is about the water at West Linn, but him and Payton (Pritchard) are two guys that really compete. And I don’t want to always compare him to Payton because that’s not fair to him or anybody else but his work ethic, his love of the game. I’m just really looking forward to working with him.”
At the moment, Shelstad is rated as the No. 8 PG in the 2023 class and No. 49 overall player in the nation. With how well he’s been playing this season, though, it wouldn’t be a major shock to see those rankings take a bump up in the near future.
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WATCH: Oregon commit Jackson Shelstad catches fire; West Linn upsets No. 1 team in nation
