Oregon rides good health, win streak into Pac-12 tourney
When Oregon arrived in Las Vegas for last year’s Pac-12 women’s basketball tournament, it wasn’t in a good place. To hear coach Kelly Graves tell it, the Ducks were “just kind of limping through.”
They’re feeling more confident this time around, mostly because they are healthy. They’re also on a 16-game winning streak, with an average victory margin of more than 24 points.
“I look at where we were last year at this time,
and we had a lot of question marks,” Graves said. “This year we’re healthy, we’re confident. I think we’re hungry knowing we didn’t win it last year.”
Like last year, when Oregon fell to Stanford 64-57 in the championship game, it doesn’t figure to be an easy weekend for the Ducks. Several teams are hoping to bolster their NCAA Tournament seeding and figure to have plenty of chances to do that, given the strong competition they will face.
“This has been an amazing Pac-12 season,” Arizona coach Adia Barnes said. “I think there’s so much parity in this league, by far the best 1-12 it’s ever been.”
In addition to Oregon’s No. 3 ranking in the NCAA Tournament committee’s final reveal, which would make it a 1-seed, four other teams found themselves in the top 16. No. 7 Stanford, No. 8 UCLA, No.
14 Arizona and No. 15 Oregon State all enter the Pac-12 tournament in position to host the first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament.
Arizona State is also ranked No. 24 in the latest Associated Press poll and was the last team to beat Oregon. The Sun Devils could have an outside shot of cracking the top 16 with a deep run this weekend.
The Ducks, led by Sabrina Ionescu, are the clear favorite to win the tournament, which will be played Thursday through Sunday at the Mandalay Bay Events Center. The championship game will tip at 5 p.m. Sunday.
Ionescu is the only player in NCAA history — male or female — to amass career totals of 2,000 points, 1,000 rebounds and 1,000 assists. She was named the Pac12 Player of the Year for the third straight season this week.
“Sabrina having won (Player of the Year) three years in a row, you would think it’s a no-brainer,” Graves said of her standing as the conference’s best player. “But she
has good competition from her own teammates as well as from a lot of really good players in this conference.”
Those players include teammate Ruthy Hebard, the Ducks’ leading scorer and rebounder. She averages 17.5 points, 9.7 rebounds and is shooting 68 percent.
Then there’s Arizona junior forward Sam Thomas, a Centennial graduate who has helped lift the Wildcats into contention for a topfour seed.
She had 31 points in a win over Utah on Feb. 20 and scored in double figures in seven other league games.
Southern California guard Endiya Rogers, UCLA guard Charisma Osborne and Stanford post Francesca Belibi are all explosive scorers who should leave the league strong after Ionescu and other top-flight seniors are gone.
Contact Jason Orts at jorts@ reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2936. Follow @Sportswithorts on Twitter.