Another disappointing season for the Oregon Ducks women’s basketball team has wound to a close. After finishing the season just 2-16 in Pac-12 play and 11-20 overall, the Ducks saw an early exit in the first round of the Pac-12 conference tournament after a loss to the No. 18 Colorado Buffaloes on Mar. 6.
“It’s been tough,” Kelly Graves, head coach of the team, said after Oregon’s loss to the Stanford Cardinal. “It’s been a tough season, all the way around. I think just kind of a perfect storm in a lot of different ways.”
Graves’ statement rings true when looking at the host of injuries the Ducks dealt with during the season. Just five minutes into her season, Peyton Scott went down with a season-ending injury. Scott, a fifth-year senior who had transferred to Oregon for this season, was supposed to be an offensive force who would have helped in steadying the offense with both her scoring and playmaking.
Looking back through the season, what seemed to be a team that wanted to make some noise in a stacked conference ended up being a bottom feeder that finished the season with 14 consecutive losses. There was one major trend that continued throughout the season for Oregon: the lack of scoring coming from players outside of the “big three” of Grace VanSlooten, Phillipina Kyei and Chance Gray.
These three players averaged a combined 42.1 points per game this season, compared to the team’s average of 60.8 points per game. Players outside of this trio averaged just 18.7 points per game throughout the season, meaning the Ducks could never reliably count on anyone else to step up. During the 18 games of conference play, Oregon got double-digit points from someone outside of VanSlooten, Kyei and Gray just four times. Kennedy Basham had two games with at least 10 points and Ula Chamberlin and Bell had one each.
“We know who those big three are,” Graves said after a win over the Southern Jaguars earlier this season. “Everybody else has gotta kinda execute, fulfill their important roles.”
That vote of confidence in the supporting cast came at a time in the season where the Ducks sat 7-3 before the beginning of conference play. At the time, the comment seemed like a call for help. Looking back, it seems more like an omen of the reality that this team faced.
This Oregon team lacks talent, and what talent it had was hurt by key injuries at inopportune moments in the season. Despite all the factors working against them, the Ducks should not have been this bad. The offensive possessions throughout the season looked disjointed and uninspiring. It did not take long to see that Oregon was not going to be a factor in the Pac-12 this year.
Taking bad losses to teams in non-conference play, like Utah Tech, Santa Clara and University of Portland, showed the cracks in the foundation early. However, as the season progressed, those cracks became chasms. Poor 3-point shooting — just 30.0% from deep for Oregon — started to become harder and harder to account for. With no reliable threats from outside other than Gray, the Ducks struggled to play from behind the whole year. VanSlooten preferred to do her work in the mid-range and Kyei from inside the paint, which meant that more often than not Oregon had to rely on the defense to help itself back into games.
That defense, which was the main calling card for the Ducks this season, was not strong enough to overcome the offensive deficiencies. Graves ran a zone defense that was very weak on the perimeter for most games. A hot-shooting night from deep for an opponent of Oregon generally resulted in a win for that team. These cases, with the two most glaring coming in the losses to Santa Clara and Utah Tech early in the season, put the Ducks in a position to have to win with their shooting. Unfortunately for Oregon, that was not something that was easy to do.
After taking losses in bad matchups or on freak shooting nights in non-conference, the Pac-12 was a wake-up call for anyone who thought those early losses were outliers. When the competition got stiffer, the Ducks showed that they just did not have enough around their big three to compete. Oregon averaged just 56.0 points per game in conference play, 40.7 of which came from VanSlooten, Kyei and Gray.
If there is a silver lining from this disaster of a season, it is the ages of many of the key players on the team. In addition to Scott, both Chamberlin and Kennedi Williams are seniors. However, every other player on the roster has at least one year of eligibility left. If Oregon can keep its players from entering the transfer portal, there could be a lot of familiar faces wearing green and yellow next season.
“I’m [as] disappointed as anybody,” Graves said after the loss to Stanford. “But I think, you know, we can get this back. We just got to go out and continue to recruit.”
As Graves outlines, there is a path to regaining competitiveness. That path does not yet seem to lead to contention, but after this season just being relevant would be an improvement. The 2024-25 season will see Oregon add two new recruits: point guard Katie Fiso, ranked the No. 32 prospect in ESPN’s top 100 ranking, and forward Ehi Etute.
Will these two new additions, plus whoever the Ducks manage to get in the portal, be enough to change the trajectory of the program? Only time will tell. However, the good news is that there is almost nowhere to go but up. It does not get much worse than 2-16, so Oregon will have the luxury of an almost guaranteed improvement over this season.
The reliance on the big three, whether it was by necessity or by design, was ultimately the undoing of the Ducks. Supplementing VanSlooten, Kyei and Gray, and making sure they do not leave in the portal, has to be priority number one in the off-season.
Short of a full renaissance from the team, Oregon will not make major waves in its first season in the Big Ten. However, progression for this team can come in the form of not being a team that opponents can overlook. Ending the year with 13 straight defeats put the Ducks in an unenviable position, making them seem like a free win. Changing that would be a success on its own.
This season could not end early enough for Oregon. Now that it is finally over, the look to the future begins. The Ducks cannot repeat their same mistakes from this year in the future. If Oregon wants to regain its status as a school that players flock to — rather than transfer away from — the turnaround needs to come sooner rather than later.
