Say goodbye to Jamie Craighead and Freddie Jones. The Pacific-10 Conference now owns McArthur Court.
Billboards of Craighead, the sharpshooter for the Oregon women’s team, and Jones, the highlight machine from the men’s team, were replaced Monday by signs welcoming fans to the inaugural Pac-10 women’s basketball tournament, which begins Friday at Mac Court.
As the conference’s biggest supporter of women’s basketball for the last three years, Eugene was the obvious choice to host the tournament.
“I can’t think of a more exciting place to kick off the women’s basketball Pacific-10 Conference Tournament than in Eugene,” said Pac-10 assistant commissioner Christine Hoyles, the tournament coordinator. “The Eugene community has supported women’s basketball in an outstanding manner, and that’s one of the things that attracted the Pac-10 to this venue.”
Oregon Associate Athletic Director Renee Baumgartner said more than 5,000 ticket booklets, at $60 each, for all of the tournament games have been sold.
And with the Ducks, a seventh-seed, playing in the tournament’s first game, a 6:30 p.m. bout Friday against 10th-seed Washington State, fans support should increase.
“I think it will enhance ticket sales tremendously,” Baumgartner said of the Ducks playing in the first game. “When the Ducks play, there will probably close to 7,000 people in that arena.”
In a one-and-done situation, the Ducks need to win four games in four nights to claim the tournament’s automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Next year, however, the Pac-10 is trying to eliminate the home-court advantage for the conference tournament.
“I would very much like that to be the case,” Hoyles said of playing the tournament at a neutral site.
Next year’s tournament will likely be held at the Compaq Center in San Jose, Calif., which the Pac-10 is expected to officially announce later this week.
“Our administrators initially wanted to kick off the tournament for women in an environment where there would be guaranteed a good crowd,” Hoyles said of playing at Mac Court. “It’s much more exciting for our student-athletes to play in front of a good crowd than a nice, lavish, empty building.”

Organizing the tournament in a campus arena has its challenges, though.
“No one’s regular facility was built with a 10-team tournament in mind,” Hoyles said. “There are so many things going on besides just basketball games, that in order to compensate all of those needs, we really need to look off-campus.”
Most of the Pac-10 coaches agree.
“From a coaching standpoint, neutral site all the way,” Arizona State coach Charli Turner Thorne said. “But I’m not sure how neutral the Bay Area is, so in that sense I’d like to see the neutral site moved around.”
“I like neutral site … if you have a community that is going to rally around women’s basketball. And San Jose has done that,” USC coach Chris Gobrecht said.

Ragland named

Player of Week
For the third time in her career, Oregon State senior guard Felicia Ragland has been named the Pac-10 Player of the Week.
Ragland had a game-high 25 points in the Beavers’ 73-71 overtime win at Washington last Thursday. She also had a game-high 17 points in a win over Washington State on Saturday.
Oregon State is the fifth seed in the Pac-10 Tournament and will play fourth-seed USC at 8:15 p.m. Saturday.
Ragland, the 2001 Pac-10 Player of the Year, led the conference in scoring this season with 20 points per game.
The conference Player of the Year and all-team selections will be announced at a banquet on Thursday evening.