Oregon

Ducks

Season Record13-7

Player to WatchNyara Sabally

Key PlayersTaylor Chavez, Taylor Mikesell, Te-Hina Paopao, Erin Boley, Nyara Sabally

Presented By

Intro

On the heels of a team that many believe would have won the 2019-20 national title but for, well, you know, the Oregon Ducks reloaded with three players getting picked in the top seven of the WNBA Draft, led by Sabrina Ionescu at first overall. What’s followed is an up-and-down season that reflects both the incredibly young team Kelly Graves has to work with, along with the stop-and-start nature of how any team gets to coalesce in this oddest of seasons. But these Ducks are crazy deep and capable of winning in March, especially if their early-season form returns when it counts most.

Player to Watch

Nyara Sabally is the leading scorer, Sedona Prince at 6-7 is the biggest mismatch, but: Erin Boley, the 6-2 senior forward, provides an added dimension to the three-heavy Oregon attack when she is on, but Oregon struggles when she fails to get going—during a recent three-game losing streak, Boley averaged fewer than four points per game. To be the Ducks team that dominated early on, Boley needs to provide both spacing with her perimeter shot and her greatly improved efficiency finishing around the rim when defenders sell out on closing out. A future Shekinna Stricklen in the WNBA has a role to play at Oregon first.

Case for Team

There’s two primary reasons to be ultra-hopeful about these Oregon Ducks. The first is that they go 11-deep with starting-caliber talent, even if much of that talent is very young, or in the case of Taylor Mikesell, the transfer from Maryland, who has been mired in a shooting slump for much of the season. That there are this many pieces who can be molded into a tournament run is encouraging, because you all know not to bet against Kelly Graves in March, right? A lot has been written about how when Ionescu was a freshman, she led Oregon to the Elite Eight. Well… that was a 10 seed. They figured it out late. This team might do the same.

Case Against Team

And they might not! It’s been an ugly stretch that has surprised many, those three losses, a game scoring 41 at Arizona—the Wildcats are good, but still—and all it’ll take for an early exit is for Oregon to have one such game in the tournament. It’s just not the kind of season where you can count on anything for certain, and I know this is true if I’m saying we might not be able to count on a Kelly Graves Oregon offense to be relentlessly productive. It is worth pointing out, this is only true in relative-to-Kelly-Graves terms: they ARE 20th in the country in points per 100 possessions.