After weeks of battling one another in practice, the Oregon women’s basketball team will finally get some new competition.
The Ducks face the Basketball Travelers tonight in their season-opening exhibition game at 7 p.m. at McArthur Court.
Oregon head coach Bev Smith said the Ducks are looking forward to facing other opponents even though their deep roster has kept competition fresh in practice.
“(Practice competition) hasn’t gotten as old as it has in the past because of (our depth),” Smith said. “But there’s still that sense that it’s time to play someone else.”
Wednesday will mark the first time since early in the 2002-2003 season that senior forward Cathrine Kraayeveld will play completely healthy. The All-America candidate missed 13 games last season with a staph infection in her right knee. Kraayeveld earned Honorable Mention All-Pacific-10 Conference honors while averaging 14.5 points and 10.1 rebounds per game but didn’t qualify for conference or national statistics after playing in only 15 games.
“It will be nice to go out there and know that I’m 100 percent healthy and not have to worry about anything,” Kraayeveld said.
Oregon’s main focus tonight will be maintaining a high level of defensive intensity, which has become the Ducks’ calling card.
“The key for us is going to be our defensive play,” sophomore forward Carolyn Ganes said. “If we can go out and play tough, inspired defense, the offense will come. Everybody has on and off nights (offensively), but the defense is what is going to have to be consistent for us.”
Ganes, along with junior guard Brandi Davis, led the Ducks in scoring last season with 10.9 points per game. Ganes, spent the off-season working on her game, including a stint with the Canadian National Team at the Pan American games in August.
“I think everyone improved over the summer,” Ganes said. “We all have new aspects to our game that we can contribute and things that other teams may not be expecting from us this year.”
Along with showing its offseason improvements, Smith said tonight’s exhibition will be a chance to gauge areas where Oregon needs to improve.
“I think (tonight) is going to be a test and evaluation,” Smith said. “Globally seeing where we are with our defensive system, our rebounding and our offensive system. Evaluating against a different opponent will be nice because we’ve played against ourselves and we know how we can play with ourselves.”
The Ducks won last season’s exhibition opener 100-43 over Horsholm BBC. Despite the talent discrepancy which comes with exhibition games, the Ducks want to take this game seriously and prepare for the rest of the season.
“We’re treating it like any other game,” Ganes said. “We want to treat every game like we’re going out and playing Stanford or Washington.”