In the first round of the Pacific-10 Conference women’s basketball tournament on Friday night, the sixth-seeded Oregon Ducks fell to the third-seeded USC Women of Troy, 80-76.
Despite mounting a second-half comeback, the Ducks could not stop from losing their seventh consecutive game to close out the season with a 16-15 record. Oregon did improve on its 2008-09 season by seven wins but enters postseason play on a sour note — assuming there are additional postseason games, in the Women’s National Invitation Tournament, to look forward to.
“It’s been a really amazing journey, coming from last year,” senior guard Taylor Lilley told The Register-Guard. “It was a roller coaster. It started off so well — we really wanted to turn things around.
“We were so determined to do something, to end the season playing with pride, playing with heart,. Hopefully all the girls walk out with their heads held high.”
USC began carving out a lead with 12:08 remaining in the first half. Guard Ashley Corral’s three-pointer put USC ahead 17-15 at that point, and forward Aarika Hughes’ three-pointer — her only bucket of the game — on the next possession made it 20-15.
An Amanda Johnson layup gave the Ducks the lead back at 28-27 with 5:25 remaining, but Corral and guard Jacki Gemelos each made layups to retake the lead. USC entered the locker room up 39-34, tying the largest deficit for Oregon in the first half of the game.
Three and a half minutes into the second half, the Ducks had cut the lead to two, and Victoria Kenyon’s three-pointer with 14:55 remaining tied the game at 50. USC retook control of the game before Nia Jackson’s three-point play tied the score at 57. Johnson hit a three-pointer with 10:16 remaining, and the lead was quickly stretched to five.
Once again, USC — playing in front of a home crowd at the Galen Center — showed resiliency and retook the lead. Oregon guard Micaela Cocks made two free throws to make it a 72-71 game with 1:09 remaining, but the Women of Troy unleashed a dagger. Corral hit a three-pointer with 24 seconds remaining to boost the lead to five points, and USC’s defense did the rest.
“That’s been like our whole year,” Jackson told The Register-Guard. “We don’t box out or we leave somebody wide open. We have to do better paying attention to details. When it happens over and over, it’s very frustrating.”
Corral finished off her night with 16 points, six rebounds and four assists, but teammate Briana Gilbreath filled up the box score, supplementing a USC-high 19 points with seven rebounds, four assists, four blocks and five steals. Center Kari LaPlante was the only other member of the Women of Troy in double figures, notching 15 points.
Lilley led all scorers with 22 points on 8-15 shooting (4-7 from behind the arc); her 112 three-pointers made on the season is the 11th-best mark in NCAA history, having long since blown past conference and school marks. Kenyon had a career-high 18 points, while Jackson contributed 18 points, four assists and four steals to the Ducks’ effort.
Oregon outshot USC from the field ­­— 42.6 percent to 40.8 percent — and made 9-17 three-pointers to the Women of Troy’s 5-20 performance. USC, however, created opportunities for itself with 24 offensive rebounds and 48 total. The Ducks had 35 rebounds in the game, 12 of them offensive.
The WNIT will announce the members of its 64-team field at 8 p.m. today, and the Ducks will await news of an extension to their season with fingers crossed. Until then, Oregon has many reasons to count its blessings.
“I’m very proud of their performance for this game and the season,” Oregon coach Paul Westhead told The Register-Guard. “I thought we picked it up and gave ourselves a chance to win. I thought we were in win mode, but sometimes you can be in win mode and don’t win.”
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