These two know each other well.

No. 2 Oregon acrobatics and tumbling (1-0) faced No. 3 Quinnipiac University (1-0) twice last year. The first, a close Ducks win in Connecticut on their East Coast road trip, solidified their seed before the postseason. The second, in the NCATA Championship semifinal, dashed the Bobcats’ hopes of a first national title with a surging Oregon team event.

Their confrontation this Saturday, then, feels all-too-familiar.

Asked at a midweek availability what will define success in the meet, Oregon senior base Blessyn McMorris had a few ideas — a win and growing in confidence in skill execution — but added something else at the end.

“And additionally, hitting team event, because we need to do that,” McMorris said. “It’s make or break.” (“Yeah,” sophomore base Angelica Martin said.)

In Week 1 against Missouri State University, the Ducks didn’t need a stunning team event to secure victory over the Bears. They didn’t get a perfect grade, which is more than reasonable for their first competition of the year, but McMorris still called it out. Oregon scored 89.1 of a possible 107.4 points after averaging 93.31 in 2025.

How good are these Bobcats, really?

Even setting their No. 3 preseason ranking aside, Quinnipiac hasn’t been a traditional pushover for most of the NCATA. The Bobcats took a pair of first-place votes in the preseason coaches’ poll and rolled past No. 9 Gannon University in their opener, 266.71-247.995. Their pyramid event racked up 29.55 of a possible 30 points, including a 9.95 in the open pyramid.

For Oregon, who is 12-4 against the Bobcats all-time, the pyramid is one to watch, too.

“Last year for me, specifically I didn’t really play a role in pyramid event,” Oregon sophomore base Angelica Martin said. “Now, I’m (mid-basing) the inversion Pyramid, which is something that’s new for me, but I have the best bridge on planet Earth — it’s (McMorris), so I get to stand on somebody that’s been in pyramid a bit before.”

Martin and McMorris’ inversion pyramid scored 9.90 points of a possible 10 in Missouri last week — the Ducks’ synchronized and open heats scored 9.85 and 9.95, respectively. 

“It was a little nerve wracking at first, this is just not something that I was used to,” Martin said. “I’m usually on the ground, but I think that with the inversion pyramid and the synchronized period and all the pyramids that we have, we have something good to show to Quinnipiac and something competitive that we could do something with it.”

Tomorrow, No. 2 Oregon acrobatics and tumbling takes on No. 3 Quinnipiac University in a top-3 matchup.

Before the meet, @OwenMurraySEA and @Q30Sports‘ @KValutkevich traded questions over the teams’ roster-building strategies and measures of success:https://t.co/Gda81WD7w6

— Daily Emerald (@DailyEmerald) February 20, 2026

Oregon’s second half in Week 1 included a 59.3-point start value in the tumbling heat (the maximum possible, which the Ducks generally compete by the end of the season, is 60 points). They paid it off with a 55.425-point haul, which featured a 9.8 in Morgan Willingham’s six-element pass. Quinnipiac declared a 58.30-point tumbling event in Week 1, and while the Bobcats could increase it, it’s a spot where the Ducks often have a late start value advantage over opponents.

How do the Ducks quantify success?

McMorris laid it out pretty clearly on Wednesday in the Ducks’ media availability — it’s easiest to just let her talk:

“On Saturday, I think that success will definitely be defined, A), by a win, but also by improving and growing in confidence in our skills,” McMorris said. “It’s one thing to do the skills and to keep them in the air, but it’s another thing to compete them and hit them with confidence, and I think that that’s the part that we’re missing this year a little bit.”

What does that confidence look like?

“I think it’s a feeling,” McMorris said. “And I think that it starts even from just the warmup on the side…I think we’ve been around each other for so long that you can tell when someone is hitting their skills and you’re like, they’re ready to go out there and hit it.

“And then you can also tell when sometimes people, you see them hit it in the warmup, but you can still see those wheels turning in their head or maybe one more rep or maybe overdoing it. I think that finding the middle ground and feeling that feeling on the side, we’ll know from there if we’re going to go out there and compete with confidence or not.”

Bring that confidence, and the Ducks have a great shot at a win that would keep their place in the top two secure for another week. 

Oregon faces Quinnipiac on Feb. 21 at 1 p.m., at Matthew Knight Arena.