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Dana Altman’s greatest achievement before he retired? Lifting Creighton out of the mud in the ’90s originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Dana Altman has announced his retirement.
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To much of the world, he was Oregon coach Dana Altman.
To me, he will always be Creighton coach Dana Altman.
He won 792 games as a Division I coach, with stops at Marshall and Kansas State before he led Creighton and Oregon to greatness. I might be a bit biased, but I believe that for all he achieved since starting his head coaching career in 1989, nothing was more impressive than the way he pulled the Creighton program out of the mud.
It’s personal for me. You see, I was a sports writer for the Creighton University student newspaper in the fall of 1994 when Altman arrived. I was a wide-eyed 20-year-old junior attending college in my hometown of Omaha.
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A quick rewind – I was a high-school kid during the Tony Barone era in the late 1980s and early 1990s with stars Bob Harstad and Chad Gallagher. I used to listen to the Bluejays on the radio at night after I did my homework — or if I did my homework, depending on how important the game was. I loved those teams, and they were competitive. They even reached the NCAA Tournament twice and won a game once.
After Barone left for Texas A&M in 1991, Rick Johnson took over and things went south. I enrolled at Creighton in the fall of 1992 and was a sophomore the final year of the Johnson era. The Bluejays went 24-59 in three years under Johnson.
I saw the empty seats at the old Civic Auditorium. I heard the jokes in class. The Creighton I had listened to on the radio was long gone.
That’s why I couldn’t believe Creighton somehow got Altman. Even though he was from Wilber, Nebraska, I still didn’t think there was any way a coach of his caliber would come to the Hilltop.
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I was afraid to hope, but he was so good I couldn’t help it. So after he arrived, I did what…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/dana-altmans-greatest-achievement-retired-000140121.html
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Publish date : 2026-10-08 00:01:00
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