Before it went down to Arizona for a two-game road swing, the No. 22 Oregon women’s basketball team was sitting atop the Pacific-10 Conference, tied with unranked Arizona State for the league lead.
By the time they got back to Eugene, the Ducks (12-7 overall, 5-4 Pac-10) found themselves in fifth place after dropping both matches to Arizona and Arizona State.
In the latter contest, Oregon was fouled by the flu, nagging injuries and several hand-checking violations, and fell for the first time in 11 tries to the Sun Devils, 73-63 Saturday in Tempe.
“We just have to get better at the fundamentals,” said head coach Jody Runge after losing for just the second time to Arizona State in her eight-year career at Oregon. “We’ve got to get better defensively, and we’ve got to execute our offense better; our offensive rebounding was horrible tonight.”
Despite shooting 51 percent, the Oregon defense could not stop the high-powered Arizona State (15-6, 7-2) offense, which shot 54.5 percent with three players scoring in double figures.
Junior center Melody Johnson, a transfer from Colorado, led Arizona State with 20 points and five rebounds. Beaverton native Betsy Boardman, a freshman, had a career-high 19 points against the Ducks, while junior transfer Amanda Levens added 18.
Junior sharp-shooter Jamie Craighead paced the Ducks with 17 points on a 6-for-12 performance (5-for-10 from three-point range).
Runge said that the Ducks are not fundamentally sound right now, especially with the nagging injuries to senior Angelina Wolvert (knee and flu), senior Lindsey Dion (ankle) and sophomore Kourtney Shreve, who did not score against the Devils.
“We’ve got to take a mental attitude of ‘We’re not very good right now, and we need to get better,’” Runge told KUGN (590 AM). “I thought our effort was a lot better tonight than it was at Arizona, but we have not been working hard at practice, we obviously had some people hurt… that doesn’t translate effort into technique.
“The injuries are still a huge issue; Ange is still sick and Lindsey’s in a lot of pain.”
Oregon committed 25 personal fouls, compared to Arizona State’s 13, which led to a 13-point spread from the charity stripe (Oregon was 6-for-11, while Arizona State shot 19-for-30 from the line).
After trailing 39-34 at halftime, the Ducks broke within two on a Dion layin (Craighead assist) with 11:57 remaining. But by the 2:31 mark, the Sun Devils had opened up a 69-57 lead, essentially clinching their sixth consecutive victory to give them sole possession of first place. It was Arizona’s first win over the Ducks since Jan. 28, 1995.
“We’ve just got to go back to work, and individually they’ve got to start working on being prepared to do the things that allow them to stay in front of the drive, and particularly block people out and play without fouling,” Runge said.
The Ducks have lost four of five, dropping them a game behind Arizona, Washington and Stanford. Oregon heads to Stanford Thursday, where the team has not won since 1987.