Big Ten Media Days takeaways: Inside Oregon's scramble, Michigan's encore and The David Mirkovic Show begins

CHICAGO -- Dana Altman first confided in long-time assistant Tony Stubblefield that he was considering retirement last Friday. Stubblefield waited for the weekend to pass, hoping his friend would have a change of heart. Altman wanted to meet with Oregon athletic director Rob Mullens on Monday, but Mullens was out of town, so the summit was kicked down the road for 24 more hours. Late Tuesday, Altman relayed to Stubblefield that he was still leaning toward hanging it up, but he wanted to sleep on it one more night.

After Wednesday's practice, Oregon's players gathered for a meeting. Senior wing Andrew Meadow thought they might be getting fresh new shoes. Instead, Altman dropped the bombshell that he was stepping away, despite being on the doorstep of the exclusive 800 Wins Club. 

"We had a challenging year last year," Stubblefield said. "Not that it had anything bearing on coach's decision, but I think that took a lot out of him."

Stubblefield was elevated to the interim head coach, which meant he had to pack a jet-black suit and hop on a late-Wednesday flight bound for Chicago ahead of Thursday's Big Ten Media Days. 

The biggest brouhaha now is the portal. Since Oregon's brass tabbed Stubblefield as the interim coach, Oregon's roster cannot enter the portal until Nov. 7, five days after the Ducks' season-opener against Montana. Exiting Eugene now would mean giving up a season of games and NIL payments to try and transfer over Christmas break? That's a lot of hoops to jump through.

"We've had positive feedback from the majority of the guys that we've been to get ahold of their families and their representation," Stubblefield said. "I will get back to Oregon immediately after this today, and schedule some one-on-one meetings with our players and go over things with them and continue to work the phone and be traveling, I'm sure, over the course of the next three or four days. We feel like we have a really good group of young men, resilient young men in that locker room, a very talented group of players that we want to keep this group intact, because we felt like we did a great job attacking the portal and bringing in a high school kid or two. We have 11 new guys, and we feel like we have a chance to really make a step in the right direction and get back to the NCAA tournament."

The David Mirkovic Show begins

The Big Ten's preseason groupthink can agree on two fronts:

1. Michigan State's Jeremy Fears Jr. is the consensus Preseason Player of the Year.

2. Illinois' David Mirkovic is going to be a total stud this year.

Illinois isn't running from it. A broken foot was the lone hiccup amid an outstanding summer that has the Illini coaching staff believing Mirkovic is destined to be Illinois' next first-round pick.

"Dynamic young man, just a dynamic player, one of the best players in the country with just an incredible personality," Illinois coach Brad Underwood said. "Mirk loves life. I think he's great for the sport. He's always happy. He never has a bad day. Great charisma, sense of humor. When you get to know him, you'll find out how intelligent he is. He's just got a quick wit to him.  And then you step across the line, and he's that guy that just, you know, wants to rip your throat out and compete. I'm excited for the world to get to know him."

Mirkovic's hilarious quotes and goofy antics perhaps shadowed just how dominant his freshman season was. Mirkovic averaged 13.6 points, 7.9 rebounds and 2.7 assists while shooting 38% from downtown on more than 4.0 attempts per game. Rival coaches like Minnesota's Niko Medved, Purdue's Matt Painter and Nebraska's Fred Hoiberg gushed over Mirkovic's skill-set repeatedly. The 6-9 forward also notched a historic 29-point, 17-rebound performance in the Illini's NCAA Tournament romp over Penn. Mirkovic became just the third freshman in NCAA Tournament history with 25+ points and 15+ rebounds in an NCAA Tournament game, per CBB Analytics.

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By the end of the season, Mirkovic had turned into Illinois' second-best player, behind eventual lottery-pick Keaton Wagler. Now, he is slated to be the go-to piece of a top-five Illinois squad that was picked to win the Big Ten. 

"I loved his skill set," Underwood said when asked for his first impression of Mirkovic when he was playing for SC Derby in the Balkans. "He was a guy that didn't shoot a lot of threes, but I love his ability to make threes. He was a tenacious rebounder. I was obviously drawn to that. 

"He was a fat. I called him fat. He was just a fat guy that played in the post, but he had a tenacity and a toughness to him. He's better than I thought in terms of being able to handle the ball. But we needed him as a good counter to Tomi (Ivisic) at the time with physicality, and now he's turned into a pretty skilled basketball player."

Inside Michigan's new offensive coordinator

The reigning champions will have a new offensive coordinator after Dusty May left for the Dallas Mavericks and two Michigan assistants — specifically Drew Williamson and ex-New Zealand Breakers head coach Mody Maor — followed May to the league. New Michigan coach Mike Boynton hired Brown coach Mike Martin in July to run the offense alongside ex-Orlando Magic staffer Dylan Murphy.

It was a bit of a curious hire because Brown's offense ranked 342nd nationally last season, including ranking dead last in Ivy League play in efficiency. But style of play may be at the epicenter of this new marriage. Michigan bulldozed its way to the title, partly by running one of the nation's most efficient cutting offenses. Michigan had stud creators like Elliot Cadeau, Yaxel Lendeborg, and Aday Mara to generate advantages, and it used cutting (and a lot of unselfishness) to convert those advantages into buckets.   

Martin's offenses have annually rated well above average in … the number of shots that came directly off a cut. 

• 2025-26: 79th percentile in frequency
• 2024-25: 65th percentile 
• 2023-24: 67th percentile
• 2022-23: 78th percentile
• 2021-22: 76th percentile
• 2020-21: No season due to COVID
• 2019-20: 93rd percentile
• 2018-19: 62nd percentile
• 2017-18: 76th percentile 

"Mike and I have talked hoops a lot," Boynton said. "I think it's a little deeper than just watching a guy's team playing or how they score. It's more like being able to understand what they're doing and how they're trying to operate, relative to how you want to play. If I was going to play a system where you throw the ball inside 50 times a game, like if I had Shaq? Maybe Mike is not the best coach. He's not coached a style like that. But the way we play is the way he coached before. The combination of him and Dylan Murphy together, two really, really smart basketball people, it's going to give us a chance to be efficient on that end of the floor."

Boynton has reiterated often that he doesn't want to reinvent the wheel offensively in the post-May era. That trickles down to lineup construction as well. Michigan is hoping to get Roddy Gayle Jr. eligible for a fifth year, and he'll start at the 3-spot next to Cadeau and Trey McKenney if he gets good news from the judicial system later this month. If not? Michigan is exploring another jumbo lineup with prized 6-10 freshman Quinn Costello operating at the 3 next to Michigan's new-look front-line of 6-11 forward JP Estrella and 7-2 center Moustapha Thiam. It mostly works because Costello is a lights-out shooter and prefers to float around the perimeter at this point. 

"That lineup is very good," Cadeau said. "Like, we'll be able to stretch the floor a lot. I feel like me and Mo or JP in a ball screen. Trey and Quinn in the corners, like nobody can help off Trey or Quinn, so it'll kind of give me the freedom and the wide-open space that I need."

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Quick hits

1. The Antione West Jr. hype has left the station at Purdue 

The 6-3 combo guard redshirted last season, but Purdue coach Matt Painter believes he is poised for a massive breakout season ... even if he's still coming off the bench to start the 2026-27 campaign.

"Antione West is a really good two-way player. He's a plus-five, plus-six wingspan, very, very good on the basketball, good at creating for himself, good combo guard," Painter said. "We just had a deep backcourt [last year]. How much was he going to play? Who was it going to affect? I compared it to Patrick Mahomes not playing instead of Alex Smith, who was a great quarterback in the NFL, and then learning that year. Then, all of a sudden, Patrick Mahomes, in a quick amount of time, was the best player in the NFL. He's going to be one of the better guards in our league." 

2. Michigan State has another massive breakout candidate in shooting guard Jordan Scott

Scott worked his way into the rotation using defense last year and is poised to be a Day One starter for a deep Spartans' club that has Detroit in its sights this season.

"Jordan's made huge improvement," Fears said. "He got way more athletic. He's been dunking more and he's finally like growing into his body. I think he's kind of a late bloomer. But overall, he makes shots, he defends, he's tough, gets every loose ball. He's just a winning player."

3. Mick Cronin had a Mick Cronin moment again, this time at my expense.

Everybody's got an opinion on the UCLA coach. He's not perfect, but I like him, and his sense of humor is usually right up my alley. So Cronin messing with me a little bit about how much prized Texas Tech transfer Jaylen Petty will play on the ball this season is totally fine.