It might have been easy to give in after losing to Oregon State on your home court and surrendering an 18-point halftime lead, culminating in Oregon’s fourth-straight loss in the Pacific-10 Conference.
The upcoming schedule for the Oregon women’s basketball team offered no easy wins with an away game at Oregon State and home games against USC and UCLA.
Oregon instead responded with three consecutive wins – taking charge in the second halves of games in question and showing the resilience necessary to win games in the Pac-10.
The way Oregon’s playing should raise their expectations. The Ducks can earn a berth in the Women’s National Invitational Tournament with a reasonable finish in the last six games of the season.
Oregon makes its annual trip to Arizona this week, before hosting the Northern California schools and going to Washington to end the regular season. Based on how Oregon played in the first half of Pac-10 play, it wouldn’t be far fetched to see Oregon win four of those games and end the season 17-11, 9-9 in Pac-10 play.
To get here, where a positive finish can be expected, the Ducks first had to overcome what could have been a debilitating 65-59 overtime loss to Oregon State on Jan. 24.
“There’s no way we should have lost it,” guard Cicely Oaks said. “Our coaches were disappointed. We’re disappointed. That was a game we should won so I just think really losing that way on your home court and getting outplayed is going to ignite some kind of anger in you, so we definitely locked down after that.”
The two days off between Civil War games gave everyone involved the time necessary to see how this team would respond.
“I think when we regrouped after the OSU game, we just talked about everybody – what do we need to do – coaches, players, how are we going to turn this around? We put some things out on the table and everyone bought into them and went out and did it. We never really looked ahead (or) looked behind, we just stayed in the moment and that’s just an incredible thing if you can do it,” Oregon coach Bev Smith said.
The 73-63 win in the Oregon State rematch jump-started what has become an inspiring stretch of play, with teammates filling in new roles and making up for the absence of the injured Jessie Shetters.
Back-up center Jamie Hawkins has provided reliable scoring off the bench. Teammates are focusing more on rebounding to make up Shetters’ 8.4 rebounds per game.
“We know it’s just something that we need to do,” Oaks said. “We’re not going to get Jessie back anytime soon.”
After losing an exhibition game before the season started and having valuable players leave during the offseason, what Oregon has done this season is worthy of praise. As the season comes to a close, this Oregon team has the chance to advance to the postseason, and for this tight-knit group, that is no small accomplishment.
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