Oregon suffered a potentially serious blow to their season on Sunday as it was announced that Jabari Brown has left the team.
Brown was the crown jewel of Dana Altman’s first recruiting class and a major reason that people went into the season thinking that Oregon, but he has struggled in the first two games of the year. After leading the Ducks in scoring on their trip to Europe over the summer, Brown has averaged just 6.0 ppg here early in the season.
Brown was initially removed from the team’s website, but that was apparently a mistake. He’s listed on the roster again, although his status remains up in the air.
“I will say it up front, I don’t want him to leave. The door is still open,”Dana Altman told reporters after the game. “I did try to talk him out of it, I wanted him to reconsider. I hope he does reconsider. He’s a good young man. He hasn’t gotten off to the start that he wanted. It is his decision and I want what’s best for him first of all. But I do want him in the program, he’s a talented young man. He’s going to be a good basketball player and I’d like him to do it here.”
If Brown eventually does decide to leave, it will be interesting to see where he ends up. He may have been a five-star recruit, but how many coaches are going to be interested in a player that lasted all of two games in a program before leaving? Brown, an Oakland native, strongly considered Washington, Cal, Arizona State and UConn before settling on Oregon.
Without Brown, Jonathon Loyd moved into the starting lineup along Garrett Sim. Expect Bruce Barron and Brett Kingma to see an increase in minutes as well.
One interesting note: Brown played AAU ball with Josiah Turner, who has been in and out of Sean Miller’s dog house at Arizona. That said, Nick Johnson was also on that same team, and he’s been terrific.
Rob Dauster is the editor of the college basketball website Ballin’ is a Habit. You can find him on twitter @ballinisahabit.