In the early minutes of the first quarter, Oregon came out in a man defense — a look they haven’t always shown throughout the season. Eastern Washington was able to weave through it, finding holes that led to drives to the basket. The Eagles created mismatches in the paint and forced head coach Kelly Graves to call a timeout.
Once the teams returned to the floor, the Ducks had switched to a zone defense with different pressures around the top of the key and the three point line and traps closer to the basket that threw the Eagles off.
After a messy first quarter, Oregon’s defense held Eastern Washington to 22 points for the rest of the game. The Ducks won Thursday’s preseason game 88-38, their largest win thus far, to extend their win streak to four.
“I’m really proud of the performance that we had defensively, especially in the second and third quarter,” Graves said. “It felt like they rarely scored, which is really cool to see.”
With a solid defensive plan after the first timeout, it allowed Grace VanSlooten to shine offensively as she reached a new career high with 26 points.
“They really had no answer for her,” Graves said. “She’s such an unselfish player and sometimes she defers to others, but it was her night and she did a good job.”
Before the game, VanSlooten had talked about how coach Graves told her that tonight is the night to be aggressive. She took that conversation into the game, scoring the first basket of the game on a spin move in the paint. The move incited a Ducks’ scoring run and by the middle of the first quarter, VanSlooten had seven of Oregon’s 11 total points.
But, she wouldn’t have been able to score as often if it wasn’t for center Phillipina Kyei and the team’s 65 rebounds compared to Eastern Washington’s 27.
“It felt like [Kyei] was everywhere tonight,” Graves said. “She was grabbing everything.”
Kyei, Oregon’s tallest player in program history at 6-foot-8, didn’t have any issues competing with the Eagles, where their tallest players, Camille Jentzsch and Bella Hays, are 6-foot-3.
“I don’t want to be cocky, but it wasn’t really a challenge,” Kyei said. “I felt like it was fairly easy going up.”
While she has had a significant height advantage in a number of the Ducks’ games, she hasn’t always been able to exploit it. The growth that Kyei showed tonight, and in her 13 point-12 rebound performance against Portland on December 3, is a sight for sore Duck eyes who know how important consistent play can be at the center position. It’s certainly a positive sign as the Ducks lost senior Sedona Prince early on in the season, and remain without Kennedy Basham.
On Thursday, at multiple points of the game, all five Eagles’ players were surrounding Kyei underneath the basket. Oregon had 48 points in the paint while EWU had four. The Eagles tried to adjust under these circumstances, but it just allowed Kyei to pass the ball around to players standing at the three-point line.
Oregon guard Ahlise Hurst, who led the team in three-point shooting percentage last season, took charge of that opportunity and had three consecutive made shots at the end of the game.
Along with Hurst, Taya Hansen added an additional 10 points, showing that the Ducks have a deep bench. Taylor Hosendove left the game at halftime with an unknown injury, which opened the door for added bench scoring, but could later impact the rotation going into invitationals and conference play.
The depth the Ducks displayed instills confidence throughout this team, especially with the loss of a key defensive-minded guard. But the play from their frontcourt, the scoring of VanSlooten and the scrappiness of Kyei, that advantage is what the Ducks will continue to rely on as they inch closer to conference play.
Oregon will close out its homestand on December 18 against College of Charleston before heading to California for the San Diego Invitational. Tipoff will be at 12 p.m. and be available to watch on Pac-12 Network.
